#honestly a nuanced conversation about this topic would probably help the world but I feel like too many people would take it personally

[velvetures]

May I RQ a reader who is trying to learn their language to help them feel more comfortable, but feels insecure due to them not really being fluent? They mispronounce and misuse the slangs in context, but hopes they can make the boys see the effort they are trying to go through for them.

Lessons In Miscommunication

A/N: Hi doll, I hope you don't mind me using König for this one. I've got a lot of experience with Spanish irl, but that's not super applicable here, haha. To anyone who's German... please forgive me. 🤍 Summary: You're on comms during a mission getting a small lesson in König's language while waiting for your next orders from HQ. Things get complicated, and there's a language and culture barrier that makes things... challenging. T/W: canonical warfare, cursing, non-fluent use of German, flirting, feelings, and some other stuff probably. Not proofread, as always.

To put it simply, you didn't expect just how difficult it would be to learn a new language in your twenties. Sure the science spoke to the provable trouble you would have compared to a much younger version of yourself, but for all meaningful purposes, you really didn't think it would be this nuanced. And while Spanish, French, and other languages were of great importance, there wasn't anyone who could teach you those. The one person around was König, and he spoke German.

When you'd approached the topic nearly eight months ago, he'd been honestly shocked and surprised that you'd come to him in the first place and secondly that you thought he would be a good teacher. He was often thought of as reliable as a Colonel, but giving you suitable enough tutoring in German to be conversational was nothing short of uncharted territory for the pair of you. This made for very interesting moments in and outside of missions as well as a few times where it would've been better if you'd used an online app or something to keep from unintentionally embarrassing yourself.

Posted almost two miles away from the Colonel on a rocky outcropping overlooking a small encampment of a radical terrorist group, you laid on the hillside with a rifle and radio trying to pass the time between now and when you'd get the call to secure the site. The men and women down below were only one small stop-off point for a far larger caravan of armored trucks and a few tanks carrying supplies and weaponry toward the closest city of Almazra. It was a threat that couldn't come to fruition if the buildings and people still living there were to be left standing by the end of the week.

On the other end of the two-mile distance was König and a selected squad of men who were waiting just as impatiently as you were to not only get this mission over with but to get out of the damn desert heat. For security's sake, you knew you should be keeping the airways clear for any kind of information about the insurgent's movements, but König had insisted that this would be a perfect opportunity for you to get some practice in without losing focus of the task at hand. Your job at the moment was to keep eyes on the encampment through the lens of your sniper rifle and report anything that looked to be of importance.

König's definition of what was important could be easily debatable, yet it did ensure that you could make simple connections between real-world objects and the German words or phrases that matched. Whether or not the Colonel realized it or not, both of you had slightly gotten off the target of what you were supposed to be talking about and wandered into the more... personal aspects of things. Specifically just how bad you wanted to be home after nearly a full month away from American soil and your personal home.

"Ich habe für immer Fernweh," Your accent was certainly progressing, at least in the Colonel's mind, but he wasn't quite sure exactly what you meant by that.

"Was meinst du damit? Kannst du es dieses Mal auf Englisch sagen?"

His voice sounded a little confused and more than a tinge humored at the way you'd sounded so... formal. Even diplomatic to a degree. It was one of the more difficult parts of teaching you. Dialects, slang, and even simple English-to-German translations didn't always have a very direct or clear answer. Often it meant that you would say something with full intention and innocent honesty, and König would have to keep himself from chuckling. Most of the men he worked alongside didn't speak for one reason or another, so getting to hear at least one person -especially you- made the near and far miscommunication more than worth the effort.

Looking through your scope at a group of five sitting around a small fire, you sigh a bit, trying to think of how to explain yourself.

"I meant I'm feeling homesick," You mutter a little more quietly than necessary, almost as if saying it in English was broadcasting your secret while German somehow kept it from being found out. "What did you hear me say?"

König chuckled, his laugh vibrating in the speakers of your comm quite nicely. "You said you have wanderlust forever," You could hear him smiling from the other end. "It's okay, sometimes the words don't always mean exactly what you think they do. I had the same problem when I learned English." For a moment he paused, laughing softly again. "I still can't say Squirrel... properly."

"Vielleicht habe ich doch Lust auf etwas..." You mutter a bit frustrated and somewhat skarkily under your breath, making a small jab at wordplay not thinking that König could hear you over the radio or that he'd be more shocked to hear you say such a thing.

The radio stays silent for a long few minutes, almost tricking you into believing that you'd been safe in making your comment under your breath without any audible witnesses. Only on the other end, the Colonel was struggling between the actual meaning behind your words, the way it sounded so damn sexy... and how he was supposed to actually answer you without sounding too affected by something as simple as your voice.

"Se-Sergeant..." His voice sounded a little weak, much in the same way it did when he was in an uncomfortable social situation. "What did you just say?"

Instantly your body tensed up from fingers to toes and you felt a shock of heat roll through you. König heard you. Right away you assumed by the growl in his question that you were going to be in for some kind of punishment. Maybe even a good ass-chewing in front of the rest of the squad for saying something so easily considered lewd and totally unprofessional to utter in the presence of a superior officer. Your best bet was apologizing, and hoping he'd just let it go...

"I'm sorry, I was just frustrated and-"

His voice deepens over the radio, almost like he's got it pressed right up against his mouth. "Say it again." The command felt heavy in your stomach. "Now."

You repeated the phrase, staring through the lens of your scope with bated breath. waiting to hear what the Colonel would say in response. And the last thing you expected was to hear an almost pained sort of growling sound vibrating in your ears. It made you shiver and despite König being almost two miles away, it felt like he was breathing down your neck.

"Du klingst so hübsch, wenn du das sagst..." A noticeable static over the radio took your attention, but when it didn't get worse you had the mental capacity to translate what König said word by word until you had the full sentence running through your head.

The time between his praise and your response was nearly indistinguishable between seconds and years. Had it not been for you watching your targets moving in real-time through your scope, you would've thought the whole world had come to a stuttering halt in anticipation of your response. Yet it seemed that the world still had to do other important things which included bringing the key turning point of this mission right to your front door with the sudden sound of an approaching squad tailing the convoy of insurgents giving information and callouts for how to proceed forward. Of those, orders for König and his men to begin working down the side of the mountain to intercept the meeting of the convoy and the small ground sitting in tents around a high-burning fire.

"Ich werde später herausfinden, wie hübsch man klingen kann, wenn man schmutzige Dinge auf Deutsch sagt." The Colonel's voice growled lowly, almost threatening in a sense.

There was no telling what would happen after the mission ended and there wasn't a threat of being shot or failing to secure Almazra. What you could count on was König finding you and testing out his theory of all the things you could say in his language they may or may not have been provocative - on purpose or not. Something in your body shivered in delightful nervousness and anticipation of just how he planned on getting that kind of information out of you. A couple of ideas swirled in your mind, but the movement of the incoming convoy didn't allow you the luxury of daydreaming about your Colonel or how your mistaken words and German lessons had landed you here.

Comments and Reblogs are Always Helpful <3

[elderbwrry]

Even if he doesn't say so

A little darkgingerpilot Witcher AU I discussed months ago with @cleversturmhond I have no concept of how time passes anymore

Summary: The Witcher meets a bard, the bard meets a mage, and they travel the continent. Kylo knows what he feels, but he can't seem to act. Hux acts without talking about things. And Poe... well, what does Poe feel?

Tags: Witcher AU, Inspired by The Witcher, Slow Burn, if you count 13k as slow burn i guess, within the story its slow burn, fantasy medieval setting, Self-Indulgent, Mage Hux, witcher kylo, Bard Poe, scenic, They're oblivious, sex references, Yearning, i guess, im slapping a mature on it for sex references and some minor violence but honestly ehhh idk, darkgingerpilot

Chapter 1/2/3/?, wordcount 5012

also on Ao3

Whenever someone asked Kylo, he always said he preferred to keep to himself and the company of Silence, his horse and his best companion for the very fact of her name; she didn't talk, she didn't disturb the meditative quiet of his lonely rides, and, most importantly, he wasn't unsure how to curry her favour. An apple would do it. His current companions, on the other hand...

For some gods-forsaken reason, Poe and Hux were quarrelling about a composer who had been dead for over a century. When the three of them had first started travelling together years ago, and in the short time since they'd reunited, such discussion had been endearing; both of them were opinionated about certain things, and their conversations often turned into little debates over whatever topic arose while they were travelling. This was one of those occasions, Kylo enjoying listening to their thoughts and voices filling up the worn country roads. A throwaway comment had become interesting; Kylo didn't actually know much about this particular composer, whereas Hux and Poe both did, and, though Kylo didn't often contribute to these discussions in any great detail since the other two were both so much better with words, he did like to learn something new occasionally. But now, several hours into their journey and still on the same subject, it was just getting fucking annoying.

“I literally studied her work. You can't just turn around and say she wasn't revolutionary,” Poe objected, trotting along between Silence and Hux's own horse on the wide bridleway, looking up at Hux indignantly.

Poe's lowered position made it seem slightly laughable when Hux looked down at him and countered, “Since I actually met the woman, I think you'll find I can,” before prompting his horse to walk on ahead of them.

Poe picked up his pace a little and continued the argument, making some musical point Kylo didn't understand either. He tried to tune them out a bit as he let Silence drop back a short distance behind the them.

Considering how much time the three of them spent around each other in recent years, Kylo supposed he should be glad disagreements as lengthy as these were relatively few. And, certainly, they were fewer even than when it had only been Kylo and Poe on the path together.

[break]

Kylo had met Poe many years ago – at least a decade, if he thought about it – when he'd been compelled by his work to go through the city he'd been born in. Not only was the place particularly unfriendly to Witchers, but also had relations of his – distant now, yet he wanted to avoid them nonetheless – in positions of authority. Kylo had used a fake name, a low hood to hide his eyes, his scar, and stuck to the dingiest taverns, but a curly-haired, high-born young man had recognised him anyway, sitting himself down confidently at Kylo's corner table, offering his name, and saying, “I know you. You're that famous Witcher.”

Kylo had eyed his unwelcome acquaintance – Poewas what he introduced himself as – guessing that he couldn't yet be twenty summers old. Of course, Kylo was no good with ages – his own longevity had corroded his sense for them until everyone seemed either old or young in confusing measures – but Poe's next request had practically confirmed his suspicion.

“Would you let me come with you?” Poe had asked the second the bar-wench had placed down Kylo's ale.

“Come with me where?” Kylo grunted. He wasn't in the mood to bodyguard some noble, out for the first time in a world without castle walls.

“Well, where are you going?” Poe's eyes had glinted as he offered Kylo a charming smile.

Kylo had appraised him again, taking in his youth, his rich clothes, his courage, and summarily said, “No.”

Poe's smile didn't drop, even though Kylo could see his only half-amused chuckle for the frustration it was. “Come on, I just wanna see a bit of the world. Get away from my guardian's expectations.”

“The Queen?” Kylo had asked, an imprudently displayed gold ring on the youth's finger catching the light.

Poe had shrugged a yes.

It only made Kylo refuse all the more. The Queen was one of the people Kylo was known to by unfortunate fact of his heritage, someone he never wanted to anger, in case of her having some cause to meet with him personally. Poe, while not her blood family, would surely be missed, as her ward, were he to make off with a Witcher, especially with the one so primarily known for the massacre at Crait.

Poe's gaze went steely at Kylo's final dismissal, and he'd left the tavern quickly after that. It couldn't have been two years later when Kylo encountered the young man again, fine doublet swapped for something a little more incognito in orange and brown tones, a lute slung over his back and all the more determination to see everything.

Kylo hadn't refused him a second time, and he wouldn't have been able to, since Poe no longer had any qualms about following him uninvited. Thus, he had a new travelling companion.

Just as he suspected, Poe was a liability in some aspects of the job where monsters were concerned, but Poe had also dragged him, limping, back to camp before, bandaged his wounds, fetched his potions. His life had undeniably turned for the better with the bard around; Poe was a talented musician, it turned out, and the extra income and incentive to stay at inns meant Kylo was now more acquainted with feather pillows than he'd ever hoped to be. The positive company had made Kylo better as well, at talking to people, at putting up with them, at giving life nuance. His path was lighter with Poe on it.

They became comfortable around each other. They began to argue, about the silly things people who know each other well and cared for each other deeply argue about, about which direction to head in, which inn to stop at, about the jacket Kylo had left to get trampled by the last monster he'd fought. Barely a day went by without some kind of silly quibble to that effect, but it never truly changed the form of their relationship.

Then, they'd met Hux.

[break]

Kylo had been around long enough that he'd thought he'd heard of most of the other powerful, non-mortal beings on the continent, so randomly running into an evidently strong mage like Hux, who he'd never heard of, was a bit surprising. Kylo had been employed to go and rid a keep up on the hill of whatever it was that was plaguing it. He was expecting to take a while to figure it out, but when he arrived, the malevolent spirits were revealed easily by the mage already locked in battle with them.

The fight the man was putting up was impressive, given the sheer number of foes. He was spewing fire everywhere, manipulating the elements to his will, his bright hair and swan-white robe whipped around by the wind he was creating, but eventually Kylo could see he was losing, and so joined him in the fight. It was fortuitous that they were both there, as Kylo certainly couldn't have defeated them all on his own either. When the last spirit was destroyed, however, Hux had spun round, announced that he had decidedly notrequired the help of some filthy Witcher, and flounced off. He'd gotten about ten paces when he collapsed from the sheer exertion of having used his magic in such a manner.

So Kylo had carried the mage back to camp and laid him down on his bedroll to recuperate.

Poe was travelling with Kylo at that time, and, though he was surprised to see Hux, he seemed very glad to see Kylo back from the fight, juiced up on potions but otherwise unharmed. His smile had made Kylo's heart do something he didn't really understand, the same thing it did when Poe met his gaze during a performance at whatever tavern they were staying at, the same when Kylo said something complimentary to him. Indeed, it was becoming more and more of a common feeling, and Kylo was finding that he rather liked it.

When Kylo suggested he should probably go find a rabbit or something for dinner, Poe seemed happy enough to watch over the mage until he returned, and Kylo had picked his way into the forest they were camping on the edge of with his head full of thoughts of Poe. His distraction had meant he took longer than usual to catch something, and when he got back, it was to find Poe backed against a tree, Hux threatening him using a dagger Kylo hadn't realised he'd had on him.

“Kylo!” Poe had shouted when he saw him – and again, the weird thing Kylo's heart did around Poe – equal parts relieved and pissed off.

Hux relaxed only slightly at knowing whose camp it was he had been brought to, and, once Kylo had convinced him to lower the weapon, he protested strongly that he didn't want anyone's help or charity, and that he was offended to have been carried around like some damsel. Poe told him he was very welcome to fuck off, but it soon became clear that Hux wasn't in any shape to be going off on his own, so he stayed with them that night.

Kylo was settling in to sleep on the opposite side of the fire to Hux when Poe dumped his bedroll down next to him, closer than usual – cue the weird heart thing again – and lay down. All Kylo had managed to ask was, “What are you doing?”

Huffing, Poe leaned up to peer over Kylo's arm at where Hux was lying, turned away from them on the far side of their little camp. “He tried to kill me today. I don't wanna wake up with my throat cut for some magey shit.”

Kylo considered pointing out that Poe wouldn't wake up at all if his throat had been slit, but he was more struck by the implication that Poe was trusting him to protect him. Usually, people were more likely to fear that Kylo would be the one killing them after whatever monster he'd been hired to dispatch, but Poe was different, and always had been, really. He insisted that Kylo had good in him, that he wasn't all the darkness that Witchers were supposed to be. He wasn't entirely right, of course, but it was nice to have someone hope in him.

So instead of making the bard move away, all Kylo had said was, “You'll get cold, so far from the fire,” and offered Poe an extra side of his own blanket.

One night of Hux staying with them turned into two, into three, into a week's travel to the neighbouring city. In fact, Kylo was almost sad to see the severe mage leave, as it meant he and Poe went back to their usual sleeping arrangements, instead of curling up together with Kylo as his shield.

[break]

Months later, to Kylo's surprise, Hux sought him out. He was after a gem of something something and he needed hired muscle that he could trust would actually get the job done. Hux had found them by the coast, and the first thing he said as he took Poe in was, “You're still travelling with him, are you?” Kylo wasn't sure whether the question was meant for him or Poe, but they'd both answered definitively.

The month and a half of travel it took to reach the mountain cave system in which the gem was kept saw Poe and Hux grow accustomed to each other, if not strictly friendly. Poe didn't resume his habit of sleeping next to Kylo, Hux didn't try to kill Poe again, and eventually they stopped speaking to each other in jibes and barbs.

Hux and Kylo also ended up bonding; they would sit together in taverns while Poe was performing and talk, about things that they remembered from when they were young, things Poe had learned only from his history professors. It was nice to have someone who related, who had experienced similar things to him, who understood what it was to be not-quite human and tied to a duty they didn't quite want. Hux had been raised in magic, it turned out, and, as they talked, Kylo realised it wasn't so different to being raised into killing as he had been. The small, commiserating smiles Hux offered struck Kylo deeply, and one day he realised that Hux, bathed in the yellow, glowing tavern light, was beautiful.

When they reached the cave systems that were their destination, Poe had to stay in the local town while Hux and Kylo went in search of the gem, since the place was too unknown and dangerous to risk him coming. And it did turn out to be dangerous; Hux and Kylo each saved each others' life a few times, had several close calls, and, once all the stress and danger of the adventure had turned into the satisfaction of success, they translated that pent-up tension into a vigorous fuck on the way out.

“I don't know why you keep him around,” Hux commented as they trudged back to the town to meet Poe, gem firmly in his grasp. “He can't help you with your work like I could.”

Kylo supposed that was true. “He helps me be better,” Kylo replied, which was also true.

Hux made a derisive sound. “Does he, now.”

Kylo shook his head at Hux's tone. “Why don't you like him? You have plenty in common.”

“It's not that I don't like him,” Hux said, tossing his head to get a strand of hair which had slipped in front of his eyes out of the way. Considering Kylo was grimy and dishevelled from the fighting, Hux's deep crimson tunic still looked remarkably put together, and it gave him a haughty air as he said, “I know his type. I've served them in courts all over the continent for centuries. They think they're entitled to everything without working for it and without thanking the people who actually make it possible. He's just another ungrateful, mortal noble.”

Kylo thought about what he said for a good minute. “You're wrong,” he said.

[break]

Back at the inn, Poe had the entire town in the palm of his hand thanks to his songs. He looked charming as ever, flashing smiles to all the ladies who were fawning over him, but Kylo was happy to see that, when Poe spotted them enter, his smile softened and a new light entered his eyes. This time, the flip in Kylo's heart felt more natural than ever.

When Kylo emerged from the bathhouse, Poe was already waiting in his room for a full account of the adventure so he could turn it into his latest ballad. Kylo related what happened as he usually did, keeping to the bare facts and trusting Poe to make them into pretty wordplay later, until he got to the end, at which point he decided that Poe didn't strictly need to know that Hux had pushed him up against the wall of the cave and kissed him with a ferocity he wasn't likely to forget any time soon.

But Poe noticed the brief hesitation and looked up from his little book where he'd been scribbling notes. “What?” he asked.

Kylo shrugged. “Nothing. We left to come back here,” he said, pulling the shirt he was wearing off and reaching for a different one.

“Did something bite you?”

Kylo could hear the frown in Poe's voice, and he turned back to see Poe's eyes locked on a slightly bruised, reddish ring low on his neck. A vague recollection surfaced in Kylo's mind of Hux tugging down his collar, once his outer layer of armour was off, and digging his teeth hard into the flesh over that spot. He hummed, reaching up to rub at it and thus hide it from Poe's sight. “Must have.”

Poe stood up and approached, batting Kylo's hand out of the way, which he couldn't find the motivation to resist. When Poe ran his thumb over the bruise, he was so warm Kylo pushed into the touch. If Poe noticed, he didn't comment, his brow was deeply furrowed. “What kind of monster even has teeth like that?”

A knock came on the door. “Kylo,” Hux called from outside, “we need to talk about payment.”

“I'm...” Kylo hesitated, feeling strangely and suddenly like he'd betrayed Poe. “I'm coming.”

Kylo wasn't sure what about him looked guilty, but Poe seemed to realise at that moment where the mark came from. “Oh,” he said, stepping away and back to his book.

Not long after that, Poe announced his intention to head back to his home kingdom. Kylo's mouth went dry. It was Hux who had to ask the platitudes – did he have some business to attend to? How long did he think he would stay? - which Poe replied to blandly, something about responsibility to his mentors. Kylo wanted to ask him to stop, to stay, but all he managed to get out was, “I'll miss you.”

[break]

Time passed.

Poe left for home, taking his light and song with him.

Kylo spent one winter with Hux, back in the keep where they'd first met, which Hux had appropriated for himself, but it was all wrong; there was a grounding influence missing, without which the two of them spent more time treating each other angrily than well. The sex was amazing, but eventually, it felt hollow. The day it became clear that the harshest weather had blown over, Kylo was back on Silence, looking for the next contract out on a monster, something he could hack into pieces without thinking.

The seasons changed, fled and returned until it had been another year. Kylo was firmly back in the blank swing of contract, monster, payment, move along, but the campfire felt lonely after dark, when he had nothing to occupy his mind. He started talking to Silence; she never replied.

Sometimes, Kylo found himself wondering how long it would be until he ran into Hux again, and if he would even want to see him. Maybe he could make the way they left things up to him. They'd had something, after all, and, though it hadn't been perfect, he missed that feeling of love and understanding and protection which Hux provided. Kylo didn't hold out much hope of seeing Poe; he never went near his home city, and why would Poe venture out again? He'd seen his share of the world. He was back in his real life, now.

But eventually, those nights of wondering wore Kylo down, and, quite without intending to, he found himself directing Silence down the path to the kingdoms neighbouring Poe's.

There, Kylo found himself invited to the royal tourney of Queen Phasma, as a guest of honour. She was a renowned warrior, and Kylo reasoned that it would be rude to decline the request of such an esteemed ruler. He reasoned that perhaps she would even have some work for him. He reasoned a lot of things, in his attempt to deny to himself that the real reason was hope that a tourney would be more than enough cause for a neighbouring noble to be in the area, or even just a bard...

The festivities were festivities. It was strange, to watch others fight instead of having to do it himself, and for performance rather than necessity. Though sometimes the rush of people grated on him, Phasma was a gracious host and Kylo enjoyed the good food well enough, always keeping an eye out for some shock of red hair, or those cheerful, dark curls he so hoped for.

His vigilance yielded one of those prizes.

A tall, beautiful, severe looking man entered the great hall one evening for the feast, walking directly up to the main table at which Phasma and Kylo were seated, and didn't even falter when he recognised Kylo's distinctive scar, yellow eyes, dark garb.

“Hux!” Phasma exclaimed standing and marching around the table to pull the man into a hug, which he returned with surprising readiness, “My dear friend, it has been too long!”

Hux gave a half-bow. “I'm sorry I'm late, I was caught up with business.”

“Ah, yes, business,” Phasma said knowingly, “and where is Lord Dameron?”

Hux's eyes flitted over to Kylo's for the briefest of seconds. “Altogether too caught up with his teaching to bother with a tournament, I'm afraid.”

“Well you must tell him I want him at the next one.” With that, she made to retake her seat again, gesturing at Kylo. “Kylo, this is Hux, currently an advisor to court in the neighbouring kingdom and the most talented mage in all the continent. Hux, Kylo, the Witcher.”

“Yes, we've met,” Hux understated, settling his gaze on Kylo fully, now, and extending his hand to Kylo over the table. Not sure what he was expected to do, Kylo gave Hux his hand, and Hux took it, raising it to his lips and kissing Kylo's knuckles.

Kylo wasn't entirely certain if he could blush any more, since the mutations which had turned him into a Witcher, but if he could, he was sure he was, what with so many people around to witness a display of affection which Kylo was unused to at the best of times. Along with that, relief, because it made him feel suddenly like all was forgiven without him having to wrangle the words around an apology.

“Hux, stop that and sit down!” Phasma reprimanded, “The players will begin soon.”

It was only as Hux sat down that Kylo realised the empty chair on his right had likely always been for Hux. No sooner had he settled than the players flooded the floor, dancing into their performance of an old, famous play, something about two supernatural kings vying for the affection of a mortal with all sorts of fanciful gifts.

“This version is better than the original,” Hux remarked a short while in, and Kylo hummed out an assent, though he had never seen it when it first was performed. He was probably too busy wading through drowner guts, or something similarly uncouth.

“So, you're in Poe's court, now?” Kylo asked instead. “Is he king?”

“No,” Hux remarked, picking up his goblet of wine and keeping his gaze on the players. “Nor does he want to be. The Queen has plenty of other worthy successors, and Poe would much rather go back to spending his days as a bard.” He tutted. “Even if he doesn't say so.”

“Why are you there?”

He sighed. “I wanted to see what you meant about him not being like the others, so I offered my services to the Queen.” Kylo hummed again, and this time, Hux turned to look at him. “You were quite right. He's different. I find myself rather taken with him.”

Kylo reached for his own wine now, his mouth suddenly dry. “Oh. Have you..?”

“No. Kylo...” Hux placed his cup down and leaned to the side so his shoulder was brushing Kylo's, even as Kylo was resolutely not looking at him. “He misses you. And I know you miss him.”

As if by design, the lutist started to play, and both their eyes went to the young woman performing in the corner. Kylo found himself thinking, perhaps uncharitably, that she wasn't as talented as Poe, her song wasn't as sweet.

Hux didn't fail to notice this. “I think we should travel together again,” he said.

“We?”

“You and I and Poe,” Hux said, as though it were obvious. “Like we did those few months travelling in from the coast. I've found myself thinking about them a lot.”

Kylo shrugged. “It was only a few months. Things have changed since then.”

“Which is why we should give it another try.” Kylo jolted in slight surprise when he felt Hux's cool hand lay over his own on the arm of the chair. He turned to find Hux looking directly into his eyes. “Stay here for a week after the tourney is over, and I'll have convinced him to come. Kylo.” A tacit command from Hux, as usual, instead of a request.

Kylo nodded.

[break]

So Kylo waited by the city gates, where Hux had sent a messenger bird that he should meet them. He was nervous, when he first spotted the black dot on the distant path that he was sure was them, shuffling from one foot to the other and gripping Silence's reins tight, like that would do anything. He was wondering how he should greet Poe; hello, certainly, and he didn't think he'd be able to stop himself from smiling, but he found that he also wanted to give him a hug, press their lips together, feel that he was really thereagain, after the nearly two years they'd spent apart.

It turned out he needn't have worried, since Poe sprang forward and clasped him into a hug without prompting, talking immediately about where they would be going and how good it would be to be back on the road.

Hux had merely given him a look that said I told you so, and followed after the excitable bard.

That had been nearly two weeks ago.

It turned out that Hux was entirely right; things were different than before, and they were better. The things that had changed were these:

Hux had brought a horse with him, this time, and several other magical items, such as a tent which was far larger inside than it appeared. Poe hadn't bothered with a horse, since he hadn't needed one before, and had thus left the money with which to pay for its upkeep back at home, planning instead to sing for his money like he used to. Kylo rather liked this; it reminded him of old times, when he steadfastly refused to let Poe ride Silence, in case it tired her out too much. The tent, on the other hand, felt annoyingly like Hux was living in style while the two of them were stuck outside, since Hux had never invited them in and Kylo, for one, wasn't about to invite himself.

It seemed Hux and Poe had also developed a much closer friendship, in the time Hux had spent at court. It made Kylo feel a little like he had missed out, like he had time to catch up on, like there was something impenetrable he couldn't access. Kylo supposed it must be similar for Hux, since he and Poe had known each other for so long before he met them, and again for Poe, given that winter when it was only him and Hux, but times like these – Poe and Hux discussing something so academic that Kylo knew so little about – could be daunting as much as interesting.

Mostly, Kylo felt like he still had to make something up to Poe, and he wasn't sure how to do it. He should probably just have a conversation with him about it, but the words never came, and bringing it up when nobody was thinking about it would, he was sure, just sour the mood. And if he just left it, the tension would have to break eventually.

[break]

Ahead of him on the road, Hux and Poe's little argument seemed to have reached a peak point. Kylo had been too lost in his thoughts to pay attention to what they were saying, but now Poe had stopped walking, raising open arms in that way of his that was almost defeated, but actually said he still thought he was right. It was very cute, like he was a turtle with a lute for a shell, and Kylo couldn't help but think his annoyed expression was charming as well.

When Silence reached the spot where Poe was standing, watching Hux ride on with his usual haughty confidence, Kylo hummed. “Did he win?”

Poe huffed, moving again to keep up with Silence's ambling pace. “No, but he's acting like he did. He always thinks he's right.”

Kylo thought about it for a beat; Hux did indeed always think that he was right. It was one of the things that had caused friction in their attempt at a relationship that one winter. It wasn't that all three of them couldn't be stubborn, more that Kylo and Poe had much more ability to hold out against each other's pestering than either of them seemed to have against Hux. One narrowing twitch of those steely-grey eyes, and anyone with even half a sense of self-preservation would surrender. So Kylo could sympathise with Poe's little pout.

They came to the edge of the forest, the village where they planned to stop a short way before them across a few fields. Kylo drew Silence to a halt and put out a hand to Poe, who looked at it first with surprise and then joy. He quickly allowed Kylo to help him up, settling just behind the Witcher, his chest pressed to his back, their thighs brushing against each other with every movement. Kylo could feel it all, and he tried not to let his stomach flip too much when Poe's arms snaked around his sides, hands locking at his front. He cursed inwardly that today he'd chosen to forgo some layers in favour of his cooler shirt.

But then Poe was saying to him over his shoulder – though it felt more like murmuring in his ear - “Come on, I wanna see Hux's face.”

Kylo prodded Silence to walk on, closing the distance on Hux. As they passed, Kylo felt Poe remove one hand to wave at the mage. Looking around, it was in almost slow motion that Hux's expression went from one of mild astonishment to annoyance to jealousy.

“See you there, Hugs!” Poe said, and Kylo smiled to himself.

[thevindicativevordan]

Terra-Man

I created a section for Superman Rogues in my Superman masterpost so I feel obligated to actually write about a character for there. But I don’t really want to dive into the nuances of Lex or any of the big guns just yet, so how about we talk about a guy most people don’t even know exists?

Terra-Man friends! The Pre-Crisis version was created by Cary Bates, Curt Swan, and Dick Dillin. Based on Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name”, he was a child of the old American Wild West, with his father killed by an alien. Young Tobias Manning was then adopted by said alien out of guilt. The alien took Tobias with him out into the cosmos, trained him, and crafted high tech weaponry for him that resembled weapons used by 19th century cowboys. He was also gifted with slowed aging that gave him nigh-immortality. Tobias killed his alien guardian and struck out on his own as an interstellar criminal, taking the name “Terra-Man” to homage his Earth roots. His Pre-Crisis fights with Superman varied between him being treated as a bizarre gag villain and a deadly serious threat.

Spoilers: The guy who ages up Superman is Tobias. He actually comes across as a legitimate threat in the story, using preptime to outwit Clark repeatedly:

And it was the first time I had read a story with Terra-Man in it that made me go “this guy could be a legitimate threat”. Of course Bates had more creativity in his pinkie than a lot of creators produce in their entire careers, and the Post-Crisis revamp of Terra-Man really sucked:

They got rid of his cowboy hat (a creative felony if I ever saw one), and revamped him as a businessman who had a crisis of conscience over the environmental damage he was causing, and thus set out on a crusade to protect the environment. They kept the high tech weaponry, and gave a lot of it an ecological spin, he had gadgets that allowed him to drain Superman’s solar levels to make him susceptible to weaponry, but the background motivation has aged poorly. Given the current environmental state of the world, more people would probably cheer this version of Tobias on as a hero (just look at Green Arrow or the Poison Ivy fans!) than want to see Superman beat him up. Also he still talked like an old school cowboy for some bizarre reason? Or maybe that was just how writers thought every Texan talked.

Anyway he ended up getting ripped in half by Black Adam and basically has been gone ever since as far as I’m aware:

 So he’s been absent for two whole reboots now, New 52 & Rebirth, so I feel entitled to give my idea for how to make him work as a Superman Rogue. First up: his design. None of the ones I posted above really worked for me, none of them look “cool”, and if Venom and Carnage have taught us anything it’s that 90% of why some villains stick around is that they look cool. The Pre-Crisis one is too plain looking, he looks generic, the Post-Crisis look lacks a hat and the cowboy theme and is thus unacceptable. Luckily there’s already two very cool looking sources to draw on for a new design:

Guy front and center is Terra-Man from the Legion of Superheroes cartoon, and my first introduction to the character. His backstory was heavily modified for the show, but he was a stone cold badass, forcing Imperiex and Superman X to team up to beat him. Think Cad Bane from The Clone Wars by way of Terminator and you basically get the gist. I honestly wouldn’t mind just straight up taking that design and adding the mustache of the comic version. But there’s another source to draw from:

How the hell this guy never caught on I’ll never know. Maybe because Morrison never gave him enough badass moments during their Action run? But Nimrod has a very cool design, and he also has some crazy weapons like a gun that shoots telepathic bullets, he already feels somewhat like a Terra-Man revamp to me. I’d take the idea of a helmet/full body suit and the crazy high-concept tech weapons from Nimrod & Pre-Crisis Terra-Man, and combine it with the color scheme, basic outfit and hat of the animated Terra-Man. That would be a really cool design that would get people interested in Tobias I feel.

Second off: the name. Maybe I was just dumb as a kid, but I was always wondering why animated Terra-Man never used his earthbender powers. He clearly had them, why else would he call himself Terra-Man and not Space Cowboy? In the interest of retroactively justifying my young self’s stupidity, I propose a new name: The Terran. I think that does a better job of conveying what his deal is, that he’s a former resident of Earth aka Terra who has gone out and made a name for himself in the cosmos. Think of the children who will no longer be confused about why he’s not throwing boulders at his foes. I rest my case.

Third and finally: The motivation. Why does this guy show up on Earth? What’s his deal? Why does he hate Superman? Well I think there’s some easy justification in explaining why he would finally return to Earth in the first place by making him a hunter like Nimrod was. Terran is out to hunt the most dangerous creatures of a species for sport and profit. Guess who has an Intergalactic Zoo in his Fortress, containing last members of extinct species some of whom posses hides or organs that would fetch high prices on the galactic black market? That’s an easy way to justify why the two would first come to blows, and where the root of the contempt for each other would begin.

But that would only be the beginning. See there’s some very interesting twists on the Superman concept with Tobias. He inverts a lot of the core components of Superman. He’s a human who was abducted and adopted by aliens as a child. He got his “powers” from his alien father, and his “name” from the aliens he worked for and killed. He’s a human straight out of Earth’s past, a literal Man of Yesterday. I think you could do some very interesting stuff by contrasting the two, and one of the big ways to do it would be to make Tobias Manning gay.

Yeah yeah get your jokes out of the way but hear me out: Tobias is from 19th century America, not exactly known for it’s tolerance of homosexuality (or anything non-WASP really). Part of why Tobas stayed away for so long then was that he felt alienated from his home planet. He thought he would never be accepted there, and thus stayed away and tried to carve out a life for himself in space where at least no one looked down on him for who he loved. So when he finally comes back and sees the way things have improved he’s overjoyed. Finally he can be himself among his own kind, he doesn’t have to stay away from Earth anymore, he can stay here and reconnect with his heritage. But then he runs into another barrier: He was raised according to 19th century American norms as a kid, then by alien norms for the rest of his life. He has zero in common with regular humans in the 21st century DCU Earth. His speech is antiquated and peppered with alien words no one understands, marking him as odd. Nobody shares any of his interests, and his job, which would’ve been cool and badass in the 19th century, now invites disgust in everyday conversations. Tobias may have been a human born on Earth, but he was born in the Wild West and raised in space, and he’s become totally alienated from the rest of humanity.

Enter Superman, an alien born on another planet but perfectly able to live amongst humanity since he was raised by them and educated in their modern standards. He’s white-passing and straight, and those two attributes help him be accepted. It would absolutely piss Tobias off that this alien is viewed as more human than he is, is accepted where he is not, and that would fuel the fires of resentment. So when he and Clark cross paths, Tobias is out for blood. Not just to beat/kill Superman, but to embarrass him, humiliate him, make him the outcast for everyone to point and gawk at. Also killing one of the last Kryptonians would really help cement Tobias’ reputation as a stone cold badass hunter which doesn’t hurt either.

On Superman’s side, part of him would absolutely despise Tobias for being a poacher, for hunting and killing endangered species, for trying to kill or humiliate him. He’d be put off by Tobias’ 19th century ideal of manhood and enjoyment of killing, something Superman wholeheartedly abhors. But on the other hand he would absolutely empathize with Tobias’ frustration. Clark has felt alienated from humanity at points himself, but also recognizes that he was lucky to look and be like he does given where he landed. He’d want to try to reach this guy, to connect with him, given how much he can sympathize with the longing for a place where you can be yourself without fearing rejection from others. Whether he would ever succeed is anyone’s guess.

I realize the possible pitfalls in making a prominent villain, who is also a cowboy gay, but I do think what I have here is an interesting way at looking at the very concept of “alieness”, a topic often explored in Superman stories. I’d add a prominent gay member to Superman’s supporting cast as a counterbalance too, either to the Daily Planet or the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit.

So yeah that’s how I’d revamp Tobias into the Terran.

[norgestan]

I'm going back for seconds! Viri/Hugo, Nora/Miquel, Lucasim, Emma/You. Lol tbh I just want an Emma ship and I feel like we haven't properly settled for one. 😔 Who should end up with Emma, Mia excluded since you haven't watched Druck yet?

ardi round 2, i loooove this :)

VIRIHUGO:

i think at the end of the day i’m just resigned to virihugo’s existence. do i hate that they just Start pining for each other with no setup at all? yes. do i hate that their relationship was a noorhelm+vilde esque get-together where dylan is the one who ends up alone? yes (imagine if noora had told william something like “oh lol vilde is just some slut that goes for every boy around her, she’ll get over it soon and she doesn’t really care about us being together ;)”. bc that’s essentially what virihugo did LOL). do i hate that half of their clips are they just standing still and monologuing about each other? oh yes. do i care? not really. i would resent them a lot more if viri had been the protag of s3, but eskam had really compelling couples with noriquel and norandro so i just spend my time focusing on them and not the lesser part of the season.

viri is an endearing character, and although i didn’t like most of her subplot in s3, i do think eskam made her an interesting character with what they had and i’m happy she got a nice boyfriend that she has lots of fun with. moreover, norandro was lacking the enemies-to-lovers snarky interactions (too busy being a really compelling couple!) and the trope was picked up by hugo and viri. which i kinda dig, because those interactions were the only things that i enjoyed about various noorhelms in the skamverse - if most of them were like that and less bad abusive boy feminist girl jerk-fest, i wouldn’t loathe noorhelm as much as i do. although this also makes me wish viri and hugo had been that kind of dynamic from the start, and just gotten a lot of will-they-won’t-they glances from their friends throughout the show until they finally got into each other on s3. but i guess that would’ve made it impossible for eskam to use dylan just to *checks notes* make every person in the love triangle insanely infuriating, oh well.

tl;dr: they are allowed to exist.

NORIQUEL:

ardi, you just want to see the world burn LMAO

to me it’s hard to dislike any pairing with nora on it because she’s a very good character and that just means she’ll always have great dynamics with other good characters. and oh is miquel a good character. in a lot of ways, eskam gave us two great williams in one season: my boy alejandro, who is the perfect candidate for a nora love interest, who earned his place and then helped nora earn her place as the best candidate to be his love interest as well, and then miquel, that has just enough characterization to be exactly what the narrative of the season needs him to be - not only a mustache-twirling antagonist who will punch out then smirk his way out of situations, but a real person.

see, they could’ve made miquel into a one-dimensional asshole that nora is stupidly into because he’s hot (does that sound familiar to you? LOL) but oh no, miquel is way more than that. he earns nora’s trust because he’s not an asshole, he resents olga for cheating on him and you can see how nora waits until the moment where he’ll call her a slut but it NEVER comes, he defends nora in front of his friends... he gives her what she needs, and he fits right where she expects him to. and that’s so important in a season where every other character is challenging nora in one way or another: alejandro doesn’t fit in her box of “incorrigible fuckboy”, viri doesn’t fit in her box of “helpless friend who needs my pity”, emma doesn’t fit in her box of “s/a victim”. being with miquel is easy, when he just humors her and spits out thoughts that nora agrees with all the time. it’s just REALLY great to watch. not only is her season a display of how emotional abuse looks like, but also her entire relationship with miquel showcases her shame, her flaws, the things she needs to work with to better her relationships with the people who ask more of her because it’s only fair.

i honestly never was in the miquel hate train. once you get the point of the character, it’s easy to love him for what he is. as i said before, miquel was also a call of attention because the conversations that he had with nora reminded me of talks with male friends i’ve had in my uni years, and it really put it in perspective and made me realize that i have been humoring numerous miquels by sitting through their “i’m actually a feminist, ya know” think-pieces and agreeing with the general feeling of it. and i don’t think a character like niko could EVER make anyone feel like that.

i’ve checked the middle square because that was my reaction every time eskam made a point to parallel noriquel to noorhelm. like YES. YOU DO GET ME. TRULY A SEASON FROM NOORHELM ANTIS TO NOORHELM ANTIS. what a skamverse treat. this relationship is good for the SOUL. that’s why i never got infuriated watching the couple, despite knowing what the point of their existence was: at the end of the day, i knew that the signs of abuse weren’t pointless and just fillers for an end-of-season sex scene, but they were actually going to do something interesting with them. and that’s exactly what they did. noriquel is actually a perfectly crafted relationship for what its message is and it deserves to be remembered as that.

LUKASIM:

oh BOY.

i just.... kasim is in this relationship. that already makes this REALLY difficult to tackle it. the thing about kasim is... if you only watched the season as the movistar+ channel shows it, kasim is simply a plot device. he’s not a character. he’s only there to introduce conflict and stir some shit and then fuck off to the sunset. he doesn’t have an og counterpart which meant that eskam didn’t have to actually try with him, and kasim is just what they need him to be: a way to introduce the main conflict, a reason for dounia to hate amira, boy on boy action for that sweet fanservice, misogynist microaggressions towards amira, a loose way to wrap things up at the end of the season and absolve her from any guilt or shame, etc. he just shows up when the plot needs him and then walks away very swaggily. and that’s why kasim is an essay kind of topic because to talk about him, you have to tackle the racism in s4 and all the ways they could’ve made a conflict-inducing gay muslim guy actually likable. which i won’t do here.

but then if you look at the lucas extra clips... he’s actually LIKABLE. he’s a character: he has personality, he’s funny, he doesn’t take lucas’ shit, he will only be with him if lucas apologizes and changes first. and as someone who desperately wants to protect kasim from the shit characterization and treatment he got in the show, i treasure those clips immensely - which i don’t think a lot of people do, and i can see why. it’s just sad that the moments where kasim was a likable, real character were hidden behind a paywall, and drown in a convoluted plotline of outing people when they behave badly as a good punishment. the thing about their get-together is that their impact relies only on amira, and is meant to make her life a living hell. other than that, there’s not really a narrative or character reason why they’re both into each other. is it only because they’re conventionally attractive guys and the only recurrent mlm in the show? wow, that shit’s BORING.

sigh, anyway. in a slightly better world, kasim being gay wasn’t actually a nuance as it was presented in the show. rather, kasim was out and confident about it, close to his sister, probably a regular in las labass where he could also work with organizations of other queer muslims in madrid. this also means that lucas and kasim’s relationship wasn’t the typical hidden gay love story that they were in the actual show, but they’re just, ya know. typical gay kids who made out in the club and then became just friends. or lucas’ activism on s2 warranted some instagram dms and then they upgraded to acquaintances. it’s upsetting that lucas is the only eskild who doesn’t really get to hangout or be in queer circles like other eskilds are implied to, so it would be great for him to actually have gay friends that he enjoys just as much as his primarily friend group. like, their version of lucas’ queer lifestyle being going to bars and hooking up with older guys it’s so....................... why. they didn’t have the time to say anything interesting about it and so obviously they didn’t do it lol. at this rate lucas’ only platonic queer companion is cris, which is lackluster to say the least.

the decision of making kasim lucas’ endgame is just another one on the list of things s4 got so, so wrong. what for? why does lucas need (another) boyfriend, again? why does every queer person in this show have to be dating someone and also come out to their parents? again, their relationship is just another rushed hidden gay love story that i found interesting at 13 years old and then never again. they could’ve taken it into ANY other direction, please. i’m begging.

anyways, you had really nice headcanons of lucas being the only eskild willing to revert to date a muslim guy, so that’s the only reason why i’m open to the idea of them being a couple. in a better universe, eskam actually made a case for these two being a good couple, and i agreed with it. as it is for now, it’s just really pointless, and rooted on the fact that kasim is not a real character to begin with. so i’m OBVIOUSLY sending them to superhell <3

EMMA/ME:

standard wlw relationship that would probably get sooooo much backlash about how neither of the characters Really feel like wlw and the emma love interest being boring as fuck, tbh.

alright, now that we’ve covered all that.... should dear emma grace even end up with someone in the skamverse? maybe one of the skamau girlies, given the proximity? maybe she’ll hook up with the female eskild that i know so many people dislike? idk. emma deserves a nice love story, in the same wavelength as nora. she deserves someone who is patient, who communicates well, who establishes boundaries and asks for respect, who understands she’s not only the act of crazy party girl and there are really interesting, carefully placed layers around her. maybe someone who went through a similar situation or at the very least sits down with her and tries their hardest to understand all the things going on with her life. like... there’s something about emma dropping the accusations and then dipping to another country, away from her parents and even her hometown in the states, just to throw herself in a city as busy as nyc is, that is desperately asking to be explained and explored. in a lot of ways, emma’s story is the other side of the noora story that couldn’t be told through nora’s perspective. in a perfect universe, there’s a spinoff that takes place right between s3 and s4, where emma gets the news of how much of a shithead miquel actually is and she has to question all of that yet again, and break the sense of normalcy and comfort she had built during all those years. it would be great if that story featured her closest friendships, and a newfound love. yes i was serious when i talked about the emma grace spinoff @ movistar+

[lesbianau]

I'm a trans mtf gal majoring in LGBT/queer studies so I'd just like to add something! English isn't my first language rip so I apologize for my grammar. But there was so much misinformation being promoted yesterday and from what I could tell the op's of these posts were mostly cisgender? Which is so so uncomfortable. The idea of these messages from cis people on gender being cemented in this fandom as the acceptable way to talk about gender is a bit distressing. And from what I can(...)

tell from following you is that you’ve been very respectful about this topic from the posts you reblogged so overall I feel comfortable sharing this message with you. Since it seems like others who tried to do the same thing were met with hostility and anger. So to get to the point, I’d just like to say that from where I stand, with both academic and personal experience with this, er, discourse, is a few things. A lot of people have already said this and for whatever reason(…)

it’s been rejected. Which is bad! Let me make this clear: gender exists as a mental, emotional, and physical spectrum. It’s incredibly complex. A queer person’s experience with gender is their own to put into words. No one else can. This goes for gender identity and gender expression. The reason why it’s such a sensitive topic is because the idea of gender we know know comes from a misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic society. When you assign gender- that is, categorize(…)

(I’m putting the rest under the cut, but this is a very interesting read i highly recommend)

anything at all as either feminine or masculine- you are by default perpetuating those standards. Pink is not feminine, blue is not masculine, sewing is not feminine, woodwork is not masculine, certain manners of speech or dress or walk or physical features- none of these things that are gendered. Society assigned them genders and decided to shape us around it. It is through this idea that queer people experience oppression, shame and violence. It is because of it. And as(…)

long as we continue to live in this society it’s an influence that we cannot escape. It shapes us, our perception and our beliefs on a subconscious level whether we like it or not. To change it would mean undoing centuries of social conditioning on a global scale. It just can’t be done. What we can only do is decide for ourselves our own feelings with gender, sexuality, etc. We weren’t born with the perks of falling into every societal standard demanded of us. As a result(…)

we are forced to examine our identities and try to make sense of what makes us feel a disconnect with the identity we’re told we must have. For some it’s a journey away from those societal standards entirely. For others it’s about finding a more comfortable spot within those norms. There is no invalid way of experiencing this. For gender specifically the experience is even more nuanced, confusing and delicate. This is because the further away one strays from gender norms(…)

specifically the greater the danger. There can be fatal consequences to simply existing as a trans individual. Both from violence and suicide. Because this is what our society perpetuates. So the second any of us project something born from discrimination and hatred onto anyone or anything other than ourselves, we are are honoring what it was meant to do. As a trans woman my experiences with masculinity have been very unpleasant and as such I’m very sensitive about conversations(…)

involving femininity and masculinity. For me womanhood is something I associate with femininity and I can’t break free from my feelings about it. However not all women feel this way. There are masculine women who are joyous in their womanhood and they are valid in their experience. It does not and would never affect my experience nor would mine affect theirs. Unless I came up to her and told her women can only be feminine or she came up to me and congratulated me on(…)

being a feminine man because we would both cause each other a lot of pain. Even if she meant to be nice to me I would be experiencing depression for weeks even though she meant no harm and even if she apologized to me right after. Another example is if someone told me they loved how feminine my demeanor despite having no hips I would probably burst into tears right there! I can’t help but have a very traditional view of gender in regards to my own identity. I’m a feminine woman(…)

who thinks everything I am and do is feminine. But because I can’t afford to transition I feel that I have to be more loyal to societal norms of gender in hopes I can be more passing. I see a feminine woman when I look in the mirror without makeup or my wig. But the world doesn’t see that. I go to sleep a masculine cis man according to society. Hell, I’m a cis man crossdressing in a wig to my neighborhood Kroger when I groceries. Someone might say that to me as a complement(…)

but hearing things like that nearly drove me to suicide in my teens. I can’t think of a more clear example of the harm in societal gender norms. It is a one-sided word. I walk towards the handle and I am given security. I love being a girly girl and wearing pink and wearing padded bras and a wig because I feel feminine and when I feel feminine I feel like a woman. If I were to take all that sitting at the tip of my sword and walked right towards a trans man what do you(…)

think would happen? It’s a terrible thing! If I waved around my sword out in the open- gave my view of gender and interpreted the identity of gender according to my experiences- what do you think would happen? It’s dangerous! And what I see every day with Harry is a lot of sword waving. Yesterday it was an outright sword fighting! When people were saying what made Harry masculine and feminine the only thing they were doing was promoting every homophobic, mysogynistic and transphobic(…)

and traditional societal standard of gender. Harry’s feminine because of this, followed by a statement that is meant to contrast the previous one regarding why he is masculine because of something else. The excuse is that they’re appreciating how multidimensional he is. But what they do is very blatantly categorize these traits as paradoxical. That there is something about the things being mentioned that are different, complex and unharmonious. And(..)

in a way that is the most harmful they make the implication that this is something he means to be. Harry has made a connection with gender and himself and it’s very simple. Masculinity, femininity, womanhood and manhood. The context has always been lighthearded and it has always been consistent. There is ironically no complexity at all. By simply wearing a leopard print suit he became Shania Twain according to his friends. He thoughtlessly talks about being pregnant without(…)

commenting on his gender or biology. So I find it strange that others try to make him out to be so deeply complex when he talks about himself so bluntly! The only way to speak on gender identity and gender expression is to take cues from the other person and stay true to respecting their identity. This is never seems something that’s given to Harry in the way people talk about him. It is the only way you can refer to someone’s gender identity ever. When he is taken apart(…)

and categorized into what is and is not comparable it directly opposes how he talks about himself. This isn’t something that doesn’t do his character justice or undermines what a complex and multifaceted human being he is. I’m a complex and multifaceted person and I only connect with one gender! I don’t like how this always used as an excuse or even something that comes into question. The only way to talk about gender and everything that falls into it is by mirroring(…)

the comments of the individual and those closest to them who are already doing the same. By not doing that you’re stepping into the minefield that is societal gender norms. It’s no wonder the people at the forefront of yesterday’s discourse were met with an entire onslought of outrage. This is how it will always be and honestly should be. People need to learn compassion and understanding and distance if they are trans or not. The great irony is the fight to establish(…)

Harry’s masculinity and the guilt that is demanded from those who don’t mention it the way they do. Not being masculine is one of the rare things Harry’s been very vocal about. Yesterday’s discussion should’ve never escalated the way it did. This is much bigger than fandom. Because what is shared is what you are being told is oksay by the person. If they compare themselves to women and use female pronouns then take cue. If they says they are not masculine then take cure. If(…)

the person shares with you a comment involving themselves within the gender spectrum then this is the only thing it’s okay to repeat. To speak generally is to place your view of gender onto a queer person who will always be listening and who will always disagree. Reading through some of the things from yesterday broke my heart in two. I don’t ever want to see such reckless comments on gender in a fandom full of so many queer people ever again. Wasn’t the outrage and pain obvious enough? I(…)

just can’t believe it could happen when the person they were arguing about has, to me, been more than clear about how they are comfortable being spoken about in their relationship with gender. If my opinion is of any value to people then I hope they listen and make an effort to at least think about something I said in the giant essay I didn’t meant to send you initially rip I apologize for that Kaleigh! I didn’t mean to send as many messages as I must have after all these hours(…)

I couldn’t help but get this off my chest. At least a trans person has had a say in this in a way outside of yesterday’s debate and maybe people will be more understanding of what really went so wrong yesterday. Anyway thank you so much for giving me this space Kaleigh! I hope I worded myself well enough and didn’t accidentally miss the anon button 😭 Have a lovely day ❤💙💚💛💜

hello darling! thank you for sending this to me because while i know a lot of what was being discussed was making me uncomfortable, i also didn’t feel comfortable speaking on it because i didn’t feel educated enough to do so. i’m sorry people made you uncomfortable and you’re so strong for reaching out to educate people who happen to read this. gender/identity is so personal, and people trying to “disprove” certain aspects of someone’s expression just to fit their personal narrative is so horrible and in no way okay in an lgbtq+ space. i love you a lot and i really really appreciate these messages ❤️

[thesffcorner]

Deadly Class Vol. 1

Deadly Class vol 1 collects issues 1 through 6 of the ongoing comic series, written by Rick Remender and drawn by Wes Craig. The series follows Marcus, a 14 (?) year old boy who is living on the streets, after his parents are murdered right in front of him. One day he accidentally ends up crashing a police stick-up and gets invited to join the King’s Dominion School for the Deadly Arts; a school that trains professional assassins. I don’t even know where to begin with this series; I guess the best way to go about it, would be to talk about vol 1. Vol 1 introduces us to Marcus, as well as a handful of supporting characters, most of which are other students in the school. The school itself is centuries old; the people who go there are all children or relatives of gangs, cartels, yakuza, FBI/CIA/KGB agents, mafia or just serial killers. Marcus himself is the son of a Nicaraguan double agent, but having spent the past 2 years living alone, his reputation is not one that brings him a lot of friends, and Marcus himself is a difficult character to like. I think that’s a good way to talk about this series too; it’s not easy to like. I usually reserve judgement for the end of my reviews, but I do have to warn you; this is an R rated comic. Don’t let the age of the protagonists fool you; this is a series full of blood, gore, drug abuse, murder, rape, pedophilia, animal cruelty and basically any other trigger you can think of. It’s a series that operates on shock value, in the sense that all the characters are thoroughly unlikable, they have horrible things happen to them and do horrible things to each other, and most of them are rather pretentious, annoying, and act very much like teenagers would, if they were stuck in that kind of situation. The series is set in the 80’s, during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. This is an important detail, because Marcus’ motivation for joining the school (other than romance) has to do with Reagan specifically, as he is indirectly implicated in his parents’ death. The whole plot point about Marcus’ parents’ death is so crazy that even if I told it to you, you wouldn’t believe me, so I’ll just let you read it. The 80’s setting is honestly one of the best parts of the series; there’s a lot of talk about politics, homelessness caused by the Reagan administration, veteran rights, and of course, lots and lots of drugs. The entirety of issues 5 and 6 have to do with Marcus tripping on acid, and the way Craig draws and captures the feeling of being on acid is probably one of the best depictions I’ve seen in media, save perhaps Enter the Void. I am so curious to see how they do that in the show. There’s also a lot of talk about music; of course special snowflake Marcus listens to the Smiths (look I can say it, I too love the Smiths), but obviously there’s also talk of some early rap like LL Cool J and Public Enemy (wow I’m old). That whole conversation between Willie and Marcus is actually really interesting, because it serves as a bigger discussion rather than just music; it’s about the ways in which you want to be perceived, about bravery vs posing, and what is and isn’t allowed for ‘tough men’ to like. I could have definitely lived without the word ‘fag’ and “pussy” being thrown around all over the place, but I suppose that too is authentic to the time period and the way teenage boys talk. Actually, the only thing I can say about the setting that didn’t mesh, is the dialogue. Marcus and the others talk like teenagers talk today; if I just read their lines, and had no idea this series was a period piece, I’m not sure I would’ve known it is set in the 80’s. What helps, is that all the characters sound authentic; they are written like teenagers, both in the way they speak and in the actions they take; they want to be cool, and mature, and smart, and Remender has a good grasp on all of their voices. The plot of vol 1 is fast, action packed, and entirely batshit. There were several scenes which I found very effective; the scene with Marcus and the homeless man in issue 2, will probably haunt my nightmares; it’s such a good scene, and it makes Marcus probably the most unlikable and yet sympathetic lead character I’ve ever read. The fight between Marcus and Chico was also great, though I think it goes on for too long, and by the end of it, I was genuinely shocked that Marcus was able to survive, much less move after that much bodily harm. There are chase sequences that are amazing, the art helps make everything so much more engaging and fast paced; I was flipping pages, on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next. The actual story, is a bit muddled and unfocused; issue 1 is Marcus’ life before the school and how he got there, issue 2 is him making friends with some of the other students, issue 3 has him and Willie try and complete an assignment that goes wrong, and issues 4, 5, and 6, have the gang go to Vegas to kill someone, while also tripping on acid and getting chased by Chico. There isn’t really enough time to take in everything, and while I think the book actually does a great job at balancing the action with the character stuff the ending of issue 6 does leave a lot to be desired. Let’s talk about the characters. First we have the two girls, Saya and Maria. Saya is the typical cold, (dare I say tsundere) love interest; she’s a yakuza, has a troubled past and is the reason Marcus decides to join the school. I don’t have much to say about her; I found her pretty bland. Maria was a bit better, in that she has more of a personality. I didn’t like that she was shown to be both manipulative and kind of air-headed, and that her friendship with Saya was that superficial (though again, I suppose that is authentic to how some teenage girls are like). Her confrontation with Chico did illuminate at least a bit of why she’s acting the way she is, but I am really not looking forward to Marcus-Maria-Saya love triangle.  Chico was… a mess. He’s part of a cartel family, is jealous, violent, constantly angry and more than a little crazy. I kind of hated that he got settled with that role, mostly because he’s completely irredeemable. On the one hand I understand why he was angry at Maria and why he tried to kill Marcus, but he kills more people in a single issue than any of the other characters in all the rest of the issues combined, and shows no nuance or remorse.  Billy’s a punk, who I actually liked; he has a subplot about his father that was interesting, though like most things in this series, it’s very over the top graphic, and very on the nose with the storytelling. Billy being a crass character was fine, but the conclusion between him and his dad would have worked better if it wasn’t so dramatic.   Willie I liked the most. Unlike Chico who is just a stereotype of the angry, Mexican kid in a gang, Willie is a subversion of the stereotype about a black kid in a gang. He puts a lot of stock in appearance and reputation, because he has to maintain it, since he’s not actually capable of doing the things everyone thinks he can. I liked his friendship with Marcus, and I’m curious to see what Remender does with him in later volumes. I have to mention “Marcus’ Mortal Enemy”; he was just such an insane character that I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The fact that he goes around calling himself Marcus’ Mortal Enemy, and ‘a sadistic redneck who fucks sheep’ is on a whole other level of tell don’t show (on second thought, please don’t show us this Craig, I beg you). He comes out of nowhere, even though he’s teased here and there throughout the volume, and I’m just so confused as to why he bothered to go to Las Vegas, to then NOT confront Marcus. Speaking of, let’s talk about Marcus. Rarely do I come across such a well-developed and interesting, while at the same time completely unlikable character. Marcus has had a hard life; it’s clear that he’s been through hell by the time he gets to the school, and he has a whole host of problems. He overthinks, he’s anxious, he doesn’t know how to communicate with people, but he’s also incredibly pretentious, and is one of those teens who think they are the smartest and have the whole world figured out. Lot’s of his dialogue reminded me of the dialogue in Trainspotting; fitting since tonally, both are very similar and deal with similar themes. Marcus wants to be liked, is afraid of being left alone, and so he compensates with ridiculous and bad decisions. I hated his ‘romance’ with Saya, though it is in line with his character, and throughout volume 1 he does some genuinely reprehensible and irredeemable shit. I want to know where his character will go from here; even if I don’t necessarily like it. If you don’t mind over the top violence, drug abuse and just the most horrible things humans do to each other, than this is the series for you. It’s brutal, it’s fast paced, the plot is ridiculous, and it has some very interesting things to say about a lot of topics. You just have to get through a lot of trash to get to the good stuff.

goodreads

[theharellan]

dragon age positivity meme | accepting

i’m going to be answering these in one post for the sake of simplicity and cutting down ooc posts!

✾ your favourite da:o main quest | sent by @cuervocanto

my actual favourite quest is paragon of her kind, but i talked about why i love that one here. and yes, i don’t even rly mind the deep roads.

my second favourite is probably the landsmeet, especially taking into account that it has some sub-main quests that are grouped together under the umbrella of preparing for the landsmeet. such as resucing anora, breaking out of fort drakon, and solving the unrest in the alienage. i find returning to the alienage as tabris second to aeducan returning to orzammar, but it’s still very interesting coming back to a place where you grew up with no power, suddenly having power. and regardless of origin the worldbuilding is good, immediately the fact that you’re barred from the alienage upon initially entering denerim tells you a lot about the state of elves in ferelden. the choice at the end isn’t particularly difficult, “slavery is bad” isn’t a controversial opinion even in ferelden and so even the warden i created with the intention of being That Kind of Human couldn’t choose that option, BUT it does make for an emotional choice when playing tabris

as for rescuing anora and breaking out of drakon, i just love the humour in the quest. i never have my warden break out themselves just so i can have the companions bullshit their way in. my personal favourite combination is zevran and oghren, although i do enjoy morrigan-leliana and sten-dog, as well. i think my fave thing about oghren and zev tho is that iirc they’re one of the most successful combinations.

as for the landsmeet itself, it’s not particularly challenging, but i enjoy the variety of options you get and how it changes the game going forward. like, in every game anora is queen for me in some capacity, but beyond that i’ve had a bitter king alistair working with a warden who recruited loghain, loghain and the warden alone, etc. i enjoy the politicking and making an alliance with anora. it’s enjoyable even on replays.

❄ your favourite da:i personal quest | sent by @pentaghasted

my actual favourite personal quest is cole’s, which i talked about here. instead i’ll talk about iron bull’s b/c i’m glad they committed to what they started in trespasser and i also appreciate how the choice is set up. most of us save the chargers b/c the lot of them stole our hearts in the two scenes they were in, but unlike some other choices in the series choosing the sadder/arguably worse option doesn’t require you to be roleplaying as an evil bastard to choose it.

so like, most games i save the chargers, but my playthrough where i’m playing a practical trevelyan-- she goes with the qunari dreadnought. the chargers were assets, but a qunari alliance could have been more beneficial in the long term. heck, even my inquisitor who saves the chargers feels a lot of guilt about it-- because even if she didn’t know the people on the dreadnought, there were a whole lot of them, and her decision got them killed. she needed to show she cared for her own people first, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t matter.

which contrasts this personal quest for something like... say, fenris’s third one, which don’t get me wrong, is very emotional. but i cannot fathom why a hawke how kept fenris around for all that time and clearly spent time talking to him would just say “yeah you can take him” its just kinda over-the-top cruel. so i am glad when i can roleplay the alternate decisions i ordinarily wouldn’t make.

and i love seeing the quest’s differing effect on bull. he adjusts either way, but one puts him on a path where he’s going to be facing you, one way or another. and he pays the price for that.

♦ your favourite piece of lore | sent by @felandaristhorns & @sephirajo

i’ve answered this before the last time i reblogged this meme and answered the dalish mage lore from da:i and rivain just. as a whole. i’m going with the lore regarding elvhenan, though, b/c i think the games do a good job of subverting what we were told in da:o and da2 while also explaining how those misconceptions happened. i love going back to the previous games and seeing new angles to the lore and the places where they were building up to it. i love seeing the foreshadowing within inquisition itself.

and i just love how elvhenan is characterised, as a hyper-magic society where reality and dreams aren’t necessarily different things. and where feelings are just as physical as every other aspect of a person. it explains so much about the fade, spirits, solas, it makes even comments like merrill’s-- someone with a pretty nuanced view of spirits-- kind of sad. she calls the fade “another people’s land” not knowing that it was her land, and her people.

while i’m on that spirits in general make me sad. how perception screws with them, and how i think that just further isolates mages. for once i don’t think this is a plot by the chantry, i don’t think they’re lying about how they think spirits are, they’re just wrong to characterise them as they do. but at the same time i don’t think they’d disapprove of the effect is has on mages. it’s cutting them off from potential friendships, and not only that but friendships the templars would have 0 way of regulating given they could potential happen in dreams.

but i’m off-topic. the point is i find the worldbuilding surrounding elvhenan, to be some of bioware’s best. it makes sense, it’s nuanced and varied and doesn’t make elvhen characters wear one single hat. clearly it was a heavily flawed place, but it had a lot of merits and you can see why solas misses it or why cole, upon learning that the veil was never meant to be, feels validated by the idea that he was never wrong to want to be a part of both worlds.

♬ your favourite part of the da:i soundtrack | sent by @daggersandpoison

da:i has the best soundtrack in the series and i don’t think this is a controversial opinion. i do love inon sur’s work, and i was a little worried when i heard morris was composing inquisition b/c i found me3′s soundtrack to be overall a step down from me2′s (it lost a lot of what made the mass effect series unique). BUT with inquisition he managed to keep dragon age’s unique sound while also improving upon it. the inquisition theme gives me chills when i start up the game and even while i’m walking around in the field and a few chords play while i’m picking up my 100th elfroot.

but it’s always hard to choose my favourite. it’s honestly a tie between journey to skyhold and the dark solas theme. both of these give me specific solas feelings, the former b/c you have solas entrusting a lot of hope and faith in the inquisitor (it’s esp poignant if by that point you have a burgeoning friendship with him). and b/c it comes off one of the strongest moments in the dragon age series, aka the battle of haven and encounter w/ corypheus. also i love the dawn will come, fite me. and from my inquisitor’s perspective, esp my main inquisitor, thora, this is probably the first time she’s felt like she was worth all this herald talk. even if she doesn’t believe it, the song beginning with a soft, unsure sound and rising to a triumphant end when skyhold is unveiled encapsulates what i love about the inquisitor’s story and my inquisitor’s personal feelings.

dark solas theme i love b/c it conveys so much of the sadness and loneliness of his character. i would talk more about it b/c it makes me so sad i literally can’t listen to it unless i’m writing post-trespasser solas and even then it’s risky. it’s just a good track ok. and it caps off my favourite dlc.

ღ your favourite da:i banter | sent by @renaudtrevelyan

i talked about some banter i love here between bull and solas. i have to admit i have a hard time choosing my favourite in da:i b/c i just love so much of the banter in this game. i always tell myself not to choose solas banter, and i’m going to... choose one solas and one non-solas.

Solas: I do not understand you, Sera. You have no end goal for your organization. Sera: Nobles get rattled, and people get payback. I play in the middle. Solas: Why not go all the way? You see injustice, and you have organized a group to fight it. Don't you want to replace it with something better? Sera: What, just lop off the top? What's that do, except make a new top to frig it all up? Solas: I...forgive me. You are right. You are fine as you are. Sera: You hurt my head sometimes, Solas. Solas: Yes, I have been known to do that.

this banter is great to me (and all the banter leading up to it) b/c it informs so much about both of their characters. solas is trying to help sera, in this string of banter. he’s trying to give advice so that the red jennies could potentially become an organisation that does more than makes little people’s lives better with pranks or the occasional knife in someone’s back. it’s a conversation between two characters who are, in different ways, absolutely sick of the system and have different ways of dealing with it.

solas wants change. sweeping, societal change. sera isn’t sure change will help any, and would prefer the relative stability of a pre-breach world where she knows which way’s up. neither is wrong to deal with it the ways they are, and solas just has to look at the top he lopped off to see that, yes, they grow back just as bad. idk i just love solas and sera a lot and i love seeing what they have in common and how they handle their frustrations differently.

Sera: I don't get it. If you want to change, just change. Why this "fake Warden" rubbish? Blackwall: For one, people wanted me dead. Being someone else kept me breathing. Blackwall: And then, knowing that people thought I was good made it easier. Sera: (Laughs.) You needed them to think you could, so you could think you could! Sera: You're smart, but you're sort of stupid.

i’m picking another sera banter b/c i love her. i love sera b/c she’s smarter than ppl give her credit for, she cuts through why rainier did what he did the same way cole does. their relationship on the whole is very sweet and it was hard choosing one banter. but i appreciate her ability to both love and support thom while also calling him out on his bullshit. the two of them are good for each other and im so glad they’re friends. my only regret is i’ve never seen thom as sera’s best man in wedding art. or sera as blackwall’s for that matter. their friendship needs more love-- actually, sera just needs more love period.

☄ your favourite da:i codex entry | sent by @chantrysworn

i love this codex entry, describing wisdom (solas’s spirit friend):

When the summoning ritual was complete, the spirit appeared. Both spirits and demons have no gender as we understand it, but this one, much like the rare and dangerous desire demon, presented as female. Although its form was not threatening, the spirit carried itself with a confidence, an awareness, I suppose, that I have seen only in the most powerful of demons.

This spirit of wisdom was polite and courteous. It answered our questions about the Fade, even acknowledging the difficulty when we could not understand what it meant. There was none of the bargaining one normally associates with a summoned creature, save that the spirit sometimes asked us questions as well. Heras shared a mathematical formula he had recently proven, while Etrenne explained her study on magical themes in the Chant of Light, and young Rhys talked a little about his mother.

When we were finished, the spirit thanked us for the conversation and then vanished, although none of us had dismissed it. We soon discovered that the summoning ritual we had devised was critically flawed. The spirit had been under no compulsion to come or remain. All the time it had talked with us, it had stayed of its own volition. Heras was greatly concerned that such a powerful spirit remained free, and has updated the ritual to correct for the weakness in the binding enchantment. I understand his caution, but I also confess that I quite enjoyed the conversation. I am not certain the spirit would have talked so freely had it been shackled at the time.

—An excerpt from Spirits of the Spire by Senior Enchanter Francois

you can see so much of why they were friends in this codex. the politeness, answering and asking questions, no bargaining just a nice conversation where both parties learn things. and then you find out it never had to show up in the first place, it just wanted to-- and likely would not have been as accommodating had it not been free.

it’s great for informing us on a character we tragically don’t know all that well. and also? it’s incredibly sad when you think about what happens to it, it almost makes you wonder if the mages who ultimately bound and killed it would have had better luck simply asking for its protection. solas says something along those lines, but he also says it prefers remaining in the fade (interesting in itself, given that the chantry pushes the agenda that all spirits want beyond it. contradicted by multiple spirits we’ve met tbh, including cole, who actually quite likes the fade).

this codex is also interesting b/c it tells you some about what mages study and do with their time. and it goes back to what i mentioned previously, w/ chantry attitudes depriving spirits and mages of one another’s company.

anyway i love wisdom and it deserved better.

[mayuuunaise]

fic: antiseptic and honey

a/n: what do u know, after 1231829312317 years i finally post it :’))))) lmao. based on @madokasoratsugu‘s fantastic mafia au!! read on: ao3 | under the cut (pls do urselves a favour and just read on ao3 mwa)

one.

It is a few weeks after their first awkward meeting before they’ve set up their routine (Isami remembers rain and angry tears. He doesn’t think such a tiny person could ever be so loud. He doesn’t think even she has thought she could be as angry as she was at that time. He honest to god thinks it’s impressive, considering how a tiny, nervous medic seems to intimidate mafiosi bosses and known hitmen into silence). It is even longer after that before Isami acknowledges that he goes through with the routine simply because he wants to, and not just because of some silly honorable agenda.

Originally, the “routine” has been set up via a collective vote from the heads that make up the Nakiri Alliance. After Yukihira and Tadokoro’s screaming match the night he and his brother arrived in Nakiri’s mansion, Nakiri has decided to monitor (she uses the words “check up” but Isami has been in the business long enough to read between the lines) the civilian doctor. All eyes in the room unanimously turn to him and Isami is honestly a little bit flattered. Who better to pick than mild-mannered, free-spirited Isami? Of course, Isami himself admits he looks relatively harmless, all cheshire grins and gentleman chivalry, but always manages to get the information he needs (the younger Aldini notes that the people in the room casually leave out that his usual means of information gathering involve at least three different forms of torture. Still not worse than Alice, though).

Still, the Aldini don dutifully does as he is told. The problem is, he continues to do it long after Alice has cleared the doctor of any sort of need for a defense protocol. Isami simply doesn’t let the habit die.

Isami pops around the medic wing every so often some time after dinner, or right after his errands some days (whenever he’s presentable and not caked in someone else’s blood; Isami is a gentleman, after all, and Tadokoro should never see a sight so gruesome, even if she is a doctor). He then proceeds to make up some wild excuse or another; the week before last was a paper cut (Isami now knows how difficult it actually is to intentionally get yourself a paper cut). The month before he didn’t even need to fabricate a silly reason: someone had let Yukihira play in the kitchen and he’d managed to get himself food poisoned off of those horrible peanut butter squids the assassin was grilling (for a brief moment of terror, all of the Nakiri household had wondered if Yukihira had managed to steal Arato’s poison collection somehow. Arato has assured everyone that not even the master thief Ibusaki would be able to get his slippery fingers on any of them).

Isami is nothing but a chatterbox, and he has noticed how it help relaxes the young woman. He talks to her about his day (leaving out any vile details, should there be any) and his dogs and Tadokoro laughs in that soft and shy way she does every so often. Isami makes sure, for his sake, Tadokoro’s, and all the mafiosi under Nakiri’s roof, to shift their topic of conversation to Tadokoro and her life before getting caught up in their world. He admits that he tries to steer clear or deflect any and all of her questions about the darker side of the life she now lives. Recently, it’s been proving to be a difficult task when Isami’s just far too tired and faced with the most honest amber eyes he has ever seen. Tadokoro is often even quieter in moments like those, and the mafioso appreciates the gentle silence between them.

The brunette also always makes sure to accompany her back to her room. Tadokoro normally rejects the offer, but recently hasn’t been bothered to do so; Isami takes this as a good sign (of what exactly, he is not entirely sure). He ends the night with chaste kisses on both cheeks. The Italian pretends he doesn’t notice her face flush every time he does so, but gives her a cheeky smirk and bids her good night all the same.

Tonight, after a particularly tenacious back-alley thug has given him enough reason to actually use his fists, the younger Aldini don barges into Tadokoro’s medic wing with bruised knuckles. Tadokoro isn’t even surprised anymore, and only spares a glance at the clock before smiling warmly at him. He pretends not to notice the room brightening. Isami flashes her an easygoing grin before he holds up an ungloved hand, “I think they’re broken,” he chirps out.

Tadokoro looks a little alarmed at the state of his knuckles. Angry red marks slash itself across his olive skin, while blue and purple bruises sit atop the bones. Isami rarely has to use the aftermath of his day’s work as an excuse to see Tadokoro, so he understands her concern. After all, Takumi is the short ranged fighter, not him.

“What, what happened!?” she frantically asks. Tadokoro quickly moves from her seat, gesturing him to sit on one of the medic beds as she busies herself into finding their first aid kit. Isami doesn’t need to be told twice, happily making himself comfortable at the foot of the medic bed nearest her desk.

“Hm, I suppose I punched a brick wall,” Isami hums something in the back of his throat, attempting to kick up his legs reminiscent to his more innocent, childhood days (back when his feet wouldn’t reach the floor and mama would laugh at the sight of him). The brunette supposes it’s a half truth: that Himuro thug’s face was about as solid as a cement road. When Tadokoro gives him that half-frown-half-pout look, the Aldini don lets out a chuckle; he recognizes it as the face she makes when she knows he’s not giving her all the details. Isami should feel a little more guilty about it, but half truths slip out more easily than the whole when it comes to him. As with literally anyone else part of the Nakiri family alliance, Isami operates on the principle that Tadokoro doesn’t need to know any more than she already does.

After her fight with Yukihira, Tadokoro has yet to kick up a fuss about needing information. Isami doesn’t know if it’s because she understands that this is the most she’ll ever get, or Tadokoro simply doesn’t want anything more to do with their world. When the young medic sits across from him and gingerly takes his hand to inspect it, Isami hopes it’s the latter (he knows, deep in his heart, that Tadokoro is not that kind of person, not the type to abandon old friends and new acquaintances she’s barely met).

“Good news is, it’s not broken,” the medic comments off-handedly. Her fingers graze over his knuckles so gently he’s sure he has imagined it. The spike in his heart rate says otherwise. “It might be a little fractured, but we’ll have to use the x-ray to check. I’ll ask Jun-san for it tomorrow.” She looks up at him, wide-eyed and professional and Isami is a little taken aback by how attractive she looks right now, a few blue tendrils from her immaculate French braid framing her face. “Would you happen to be free tomorrow afternoon? Hayama-san says they’ll both be back by then,”

“For you, I’d have all the time in the world.”

Tadokoro squirms in her seat, but isn’t uncomfortable by his light flirting. Isami knows because there’s this tiny little smile on her lips that lets him know she finds it funny, at the very least. Isami would never want her to be uncomfortable because of him and has regularly voiced it so, assuring the young medic that he means no harm at all (and the brunette promises he’ll stop the moment he stops seeing that little smile on her lips). Tadokoro sets to work, cautions and medical terms flying off her mouth as one hand rummages through their first aid kit. Her other hand doesn’t let go of his, the warmth of her fingers seeping through his cold palm.

Isami is close enough to smell the mix of antiseptic and honey off of her, an odd combination so uniquely Tadokoro Megumi. He indulges, if only for a moment, and lets the melody of her voice lull him into a space where the smoking guns and territory wars won’t reach.

two.

Takumi has been looking at him weirdly for the past week. Isami recognizes it as a reflection of the same pointed look he sends his brother when he challenges Yukihira for another round of sparring (or, as the younger brother likes to call it, “Weird Violent Foreplay,” not that he’s all too judgmental about his brother’s sexual exploits or kinks for that matter. Arato has shared with him in the strictest confidence of her surprisingly plastered head how much of a body worship-princess kink Nakiri has, after all). There’s something else in there though that he can’t quite explain; it has been far too long for Isami to remember the last time he’s been unable to fully understand his older brother and all the nuances of his upturned, sculpted brow.

Takumi breaks the silence the eve before the both of them venture off for another business trip abroad.

“What was your excuse tonight?” the blonde asks nonchalantly. Takumi doesn’t look at him, and keeps his eyes trained on the brass knuckles over his fingers instead. He’s acting as if he’s inspecting them, but Isami knows his brother like the inner mechanisms of his favourite revolver. Takumi has probably been waiting for him to enter their suite, question hot on his tongue. And yet, his older brother continues to act as if he’s busy packing up essentials for their trip when it’s obvious from the unopened box of his borther’s favourite set of feather dusters that claims otherwise. Isami almost wants to burst out laughing for his brother’s innate inability to act subtle around him. Isami supposes this is why he’s in charge of negotiations and information deals, while Takumi inspires loyalty over their famiglia without question.

Still, the younger of the two refuses to indulge his brother so easily.

“What do you mean?” Isami pulls up a suitcase from under the bed, awaiting his brother’s response.

Takumi raises a brow, the corners of his lips quirking just a tiny bit to accept his younger brother’s challenge. “Did you go see the medic again tonight?”

“What if I did?”

“Whatever for?”

“Why is it your business?” Isami’s lips quirk in the slightest bit upwards. Takumi would never win against him in a game of questions like these. This is, after all, what Isami has trained with and worked for all his life. He brings up a gloved hand and traces the patch of gauze just a few centimeters shy of his left eye. That bastard Tohru sure got him good with that one, almost lodged right into his eye socket if Hayama hadn’t pulled him back just in time. “Besides, can’t you see how wounded I am?”

Takumi reaches out, gripping the taller brother’s chin with a firm grasp. He tilts Isami’s head to the side, sharp blue eyes zeroing in on the knife wound hidden beneath the carefully placed bandages. “I suppose the medic did a fair enough job. I don’t want my baby brother ruining his pretty face.” Takumi raises an eyebrow slyly before drawling out. “Heard that’s quite unpopular with the ladies.”

“So you think I’m pretty, brother?” Isami gasps, both hands now holding his cheeks in mock surprise and delight. Takumi finally rolls his eyes, signaling an end to their game.

“Alice has cleared Tadokoro-san weeks ago.” Takumi has never really cared much for tact. His patience has clearly run thin, as with anything else. When Isami is about to fully laugh, he meets his brother’s icy gaze and pauses, smile halfway on his face. “Your job is done, Isami.”

“No one is telling me to stop,” the younger of the two counters back, removing his brother’s hold on his chin with a quick swipe of the back of his arm. He drops the pretense as easily as he drops his clothes into his open suitcase. His own blue eyes level with his brother; he doesn’t quite grasp why, but something inside is itching for him to argue. “I don’t understand why exactly this is relevant.” Isami turns his back on Takumi before his brother can say anything else. He tries to seem busy packing for a business trip he has forgotten the details of. “I’m not compromising my work because of it. And-”

“She’s a civilian, Isami,” Takumi cuts him off. Isami is mildly surprised he hasn’t noticed his brother approach. The height difference between the twins is irrelevant; Takumi still looks imposing despite reaching only the tip of his younger brother’s tall nose. “Enough goofing off: the sooner you stop playing pretend, the easier it’ll be.”

Isami hears the unspoken warning behind his brother’s words: She’s not supposed to be here; quit normalizing this kind of life for her.

The younger Aldini almost cracks a smile at his brother’s roundabout way of showing concern. Still, Isami strikes back.

“I’m not pretending,” he comments softly. The edge in his voice is gone and for a moment, they stand in silence in a way that only brothers would, he reckons.

“To be associated with an Aldini don won’t always guarantee her safety,” Takumi warns, his voice just as quiet as the brunette’s. Isami is well aware of that fact. After their most recent betrayal, the Aldini family certainly does not have the most plentiful of allies. Associating with the Nakiri family has been the first step to recovering their status and prestige (and overall do-not-fuck-with-us vibe of warning at the mere mention of their names, he supposes).

“Well,” Isami hums back. His hands automatically pick up one of his personal favourites: a sleek black gloc with the Aldini family crest engraved on the handle. “The public doesn’t really need to know.”

Takumi finally cracks a grin before he comments flippantly, “Here’s to hoping she doesn’t need to know either.”

Isami feels his chest constrict at the implications Takumi’s words hold. With his brother’s back facing the younger Aldini, Isami’s cheshire grin goes a little stiff. The grip on his gun tightens, the leather of his gloves stretching almost uncomfortably over his knuckles.

“Let them try.”

three.

Isami soon discovers that adept doctor she may be, gambling goddess, Tadokoro is not.

Yukihira guffaws before hacking up a lung. Though Tadokoro’s face is flushed red in embarrassment, she still manages to reprimand the red haired young man about opening stitches should he continue with his rambunctious behaviour. Takumi shakes his head, though in equally bad shape, the older Aldini prides himself on being more mature by simply smirking smugly at the way Tadokoro berates the freelance assassin (what a child, Isami thinks).

“But it’s funny!” Yukihira whines, readjusting his position on the medic bed. He’s been out like a light for three days, Isami doesn’t blame him for finding everything amusing. He suspects the painkillers Jun has been injecting the assassin with is also partially to blame. He has the aching suspicion that the assassin might be sneaking more than what’s prescribed, but he has no proof for it. “You can’t lie at all, Tadokoro. You’re horrible at this.”

“I hate to say it,” Takumi clicks his tongue in distaste, as if he practically forces himself to spit out his next words. “But Yukihira is right, Tadokoro-san. You really are quite bad at this.”

Tadokoro, in turn, puffs out her cheeks and pouts, unable to argue otherwise. It’s so cute, Isami is actually tempted to join in on the teasing. The grin Yukihira shoots his brother might be enough to change his mind, however, as the blonde goes on another irritated tirade about actually agreeing with the red head over anything. He disregards his brother and Yukihira’s banter-flirting to gather up the playing cards scattered on their bed sheets.

They have been playing since Yukihira has stirred and complained of dry throats and crippling boredom. Isami recalls hearing the former freelancer bemoan his current situation, not because of actual pain but more the dull ache that comes with being unable to even move and it’s just so, so, so boring Isami. How can something so good for your body be so boring?

Isami tells him not to let Jun or Tadokoro hear any of his whining, and cuts him off just in time for a pop of blue hair to enter his vision, scurrying about with notes on Yukihira’s vitals and checking his bandages and bruises. The brunette manages to entertain the red head enough to not openly complain against the one person who would voluntarily treat the young man’s wounds by quickly producing a deck of cards from somewhere in his coat pocket. Takumi, from the adjacent bed and possibly equally bored (or even more so, considering he has been awake and practically chained to the bed for two days), demands Isami push his closer to Yukihira’s in order to play with them.

“Perhaps, poker is simply not her strong suit,” Isami hums out. Being the only one who could actually move his torso well enough (Takumi has dislocated his shoulder again along with a stab near his pancreas. Yukihira, meanwhile, has three bruised ribs and has his right leg strung up on a cast. Isami’s far too careful for injuries like those, but still has his right bicep wrapped up in gauze from a grazed bullet), the brunette has automatically decreed himself the dealer. He shuffles the playing cards with practiced ease, flipping and showering and catching from one hand to the other. “Do you consider yourself lucky, Tadokoro-chan?”

“Having had Yukihira as a patient for the past near decade? Doubtful,” Takumi drawls out, earning another halfhearted glare from said red head.

“He wasn’t even talking to you!”

Isami tunes them out easily enough, having had practice from the abundance of missions Nakiri has been putting them in as of late. He chooses instead to tilt his head towards Tadokoro, finding her fair features far easier on the eyes compared to the two idiots in matching hospital beds. Tadokoro herself looks troubled, fidgeting with her hands as if she’s trying to physically control the urge to not give a damn about the two flirts in the room (there are three, exactly, if you count him as well. But he’s playing nice. Tadokoro-chan doesn’t need the extra trouble).

He shuffles the cards once more, “Have you ever played Black Jack, Tadokoro-chan?”

Isami figures out easily enough that Tadokoro really is absolutely hopeless in gambling, which is oddly attractive to him. She brightens easily when she has good cards, grimaces with a pout when she has bad combinations. Isami would laugh at how easy it is to even just guess if she needs any extra cards or not; just a little sleight of hand and a little probability calculations has him drawing exactly the cards she needs.

Yukihira has told him time and time again how incredibly impressed he is with the combination of Isami’s (un)natural luck, astounding poker face, and quick thinking. Isami shrugs that perhaps he’s simply honed it all from years in the underground mafia business (he doesn’t tell Tadokoro this, however. His heart couldn’t take seeing her horrified expression at the thought). Yukihira repeats this sentiment now, with a deliberate glance towards the unsuspecting blue haired medic who wins another round of black jack that has her giggling in such a tiny, soft voice it makes even Takumi’s ice cold heart melt. Isami laughs and shuffles the deck again, beaming back at Tadokoro as he does so when she tells him that Isami’s luck must have rubbed on her today (Yukihira laughs, has the gall to actually laugh. Takumi stares at the two of them with an impressive frown on his face).

His older brother grumbles a little when he takes the risk and yet receives another face card that sends him over the required number (not Isami’s fault, this time. He swears the only cards he adjusts are for the pretty medic who has been the butt of gambling jokes one too many times today).

Yukihira levels him a cross between a glare and a smug grin. “Cheater,” his lips read out. Isami doesn’t even try to deny it, shrugging his good arm as he hands the medic another one of the smaller cards to hit closer to 21. Tadokoro’s reaction is immediate, shoulder perking up and a bright smile on her lips. Isami decides it’s more than enough of a trade off, he’s a goddamn winner already.

four.

He doesn’t remember nor does he realize when or how her name shifts from Tadokoro-chan to Megumi in his head. Suddenly it seems as if it’s simply the most natural thing in the world to do. When he accidentally says it out loud one day to thank her as she stitches up his palm (a paper cut, he explains to her. Papers sure are sharp these days, leaving an inch deep wound on his hand), Megumi’s cheeks dust pink, but otherwise says nothing about it. She’s more preoccupied by his obvious lie and continues to reprimand him for worrying her (he tries hard not to dwell on this little bit of information). He rolls with it, not thinking too much of it. Isami figures if that irritating young man from the bar called Isshiki could call her by her first name, then so should he, right? She calls him Isami even when Takumi isn’t around, anyway. Isn’t that what friends do?

The first to take notice is Alice (as usual, that nosy gossip he somehow affectionately calls his friend). And Alice, being Alice, does not let it slide.

“Say that again,” she demands with all the pompous air of a spoiled princess. She twirls her wine glass with one hand absent-mindedly, wide ruby red eyes trained on him with a gleeful little grin painted on her dainty face. Isami knows he can’t weasel his way out of this one, not with Alice.

Still, Isami is nothing if not a trier.

“Say what again?” he asks coyly.

The frown Alice sends him is comically cute enough for him to break out into a grin. Isami imagines if the wine glass had not been hers, pilfered from her cousin’s collection undoubtedly, Alice would have thrown it to his head already with pinpoint accuracy.

“You said her name!” she points out accusingly, leaning forward in her seat across him. Isami has the slightest urge to lean back. He brushes the thought from his head and mimics her position instead.

“Whose name?” he presses on. Alice is having none of it.

“Muu-! Isami-kun is a meanie who doesn’t tell me anything anymore!” the platinum blonde complains. Her small fists bang a rhythm on the table top. “Who taught you to act this way, huh? I bet it was Takumi-kun, wasn’t it?” Alice’s temper tantrum only encourages him to laugh, which definitely does not slow down the half Scandinavian beauty. If anything, it only sends her into a more childish fit.

“My dear, you have taught me everything I know, don’t you remember?” All technically true, in his defense. This little comment causes Alice to pause, the tears wavering in the corner of her eyes look almost comical as she trains bright red eyes at him. A normal man would flinch under her heavy gaze, but Isami has never really considered himself to be normal.

“True enough,” Alice almost sounds proud. “But I never taught you to lie.” She huffs out, putting her tongue out to childishly blow a raspberry at him.

“There’s nothing to tell, anyway,” Isami cuts her off with a half truth before she sends a knife to his head. He’d very much like to keep his current hair style, thank you (and his head, for that matter). “Don’t friends call each other by their names?”

Alice scoffs, finally leaning back into her plush chair. “You don’t have friends. Your categories include those you kill when need be, and then there are those Takumi-kun says you can’t kill. An easy life to follow, if I do say so myself; none of that gray area bullshit.”

“I’m offended,” Isami mocks, a gloved hand to his chest. “Who are you then, if I didn’t have any friends?”

“Your mistress,” Alice readily croons, almost silver bangs falling to hide her pretty eyes. The coy smile on her painted lips let him know she’s not completely serious. They share a momentary pause in banter as they sip their wine casually, each appraising the other in a silent battle of who will give in first.

“It’s cruel for you to accuse me as someone so heartless, Alice,” Isami counters with a cheshire grin of his own. “I’d like to think that my brother and I aren’t quite the socially inept workaholics you think we are.”

“Oh, I’m not talking about charisma,” she tuts, followed by a merry little giggle. “You Aldini brothers have plenty of that, don’t get me wrong.” The blonde winks and takes her wine glass, placing it close to her lips before she continues. “I’m talking about your ruthlessness getting in the way of your ‘friendships.’”

Isami’s glass stills in his hand, and his lips form a thin line.

“You know,” she urges on, her syllables practically a drawl as they leave her tongue. The red on her lips look more sinister than they should be. Isami doesn’t move, but his blue eyes are ice cold as they level with her own ruby ones. “I wonder if she knows about the Aldinis and their reputation with those who cross the line?”

She leans in; her eyes are hooded and Isami can practically see the winged tips of her eyeliner. They look sharp enough to cut.

“Does Megumi even know what you’re truly capable of, Isami-kun?” Alice mocks. The only reason he hasn’t put a bullet in her head is because she’s Alice. Takumi would be thoroughly disappointed in him if he did. The blonde tilts her head to the side, “Takumi-kun might be the one always bruised and bloodied, but whose kill count is higher? Who, exactly, brought down the Katagiri empire?”

Isami mirrors the title of her head, and compliments it with a thin, catlike smile. “I want to punch a hole in your skull with a screwdriver.”

Alice laughs in response and the tension is gone. Isami takes a sip of his wine and pretends to look intimidating before he cracks and laughs along with her.

“Oh, you have it bad,” Alice comments off handedly, lips kissing the rim of her wine glass before she tips back the remnants of the alcohol. Isami hums and does the same. He pretends not to hear her and shifts the topic to one Alice readily bites into: her cousin’s disastrous love life. Isami tries to forget

five.

Isami’s heart hammers in his chest at the news. Hayama has informed him via text of her condition, the only one considerate enough to remember that he might at all be affected by the situation at hand. He drops his phone into the deep recesses of their sedan in his shock before telling their driver to pull over and get out. Takumi’s eyebrows are raised in question, Isami is out of the lounge of the backseat and dragging their Nakiri-designated driver out of the front as quick as possible.

“Isami, what the hell are you-” Takumi barely has the time to construct a sentence before his younger brother practically floors it and makes a sharp twist back to the Nakiri mansion. They have an incredibly important mission to accomplish, a message to send to Eizan and his petty little band of traffickers at Nakiri’s demands (as well as his and his brother’s). Nothing is as important for him than to get back there as soon as possible.

He can hear Takumi telling him to stop, to calm down, what the fuck is going on, brother, talk to me. He puts more weight into the clutch and shifts another gear higher. When the blonde quiets down in the backseat, Isami takes the time to glance momentarily at the rear-view mirror. Takumi’s fair features pale considerably, his grip on Isami’s fallen phone impossibly tight that a small voice in the back of his head fears it might crack.

No, there are things he fears more right now. Takumi’s voice is but a whisper when he tells him to hurry.

“Where is he?” Isami’s voice is low and quiet as he stalks the halls of Nakiri’s giant mansion. The maids who have the unfortunate luck of being in the vicinity tense before scurrying along in fear. They don’t know who he’s talking about but they aren’t paid enough to know (nor do they want to, he’ll later think). His feet take him to the common room, Takumi hot on his heels but silent. When the twins start hearing hushed but angry voices from one of the lounges they use for informal meetings, their direction shifts with their steps more hurried.

Isami slams the door open, startling the residents inside. Nakiri starts to step towards the two, but Arato holds her back. It doesn’t matter to Isami when his cold blue eyes zero in on one person only.

“You were supposed to protect her!” His fist connects with Kurokiba’s cheekbone before the brunette can even think twice about what he’s doing. Kurokiba hits his favourite wine collection and sends about half of the bottles crashing down, staining Nakiri’s carpets a deep burgundy in its wake. In his periphery, he can see Alice move to take her daggers, but Takumi quickly steps in the way of her rage. That doesn’t really register in his head. None of the noise and the panic and the tension does.

All he sees is red.

“She’s innocent!” Kurokiba doesn’t defend himself, letting the Italian’s knuckles paint bruises and cuts on his mouth and jaw. In the back of his head, Isami wonders if this is what his brother feels on the battlefield. Wonders if all that adrenaline and anger rushes to his brain as fast as it does to him. Isami has never wanted to hurt someone so bad, not even that rat Mimasaka. “She-wasn’t-supposed-” each syllable is accompanied by a fist. “-to-get-hurt!”

“Hey, calm down, buddy.” Yukihira’s grip is stronger than it looks as he quickly hooks his arms underneath Isami’s, effectively restraining the mafioso don’s movements. Not that it really does much considering he could always kick Kurokiba in the face just as easily (he does, and Alice’s aide falls back on his back, making no motion to stand up).

“I fucking trusted you, Kurokiba!” Isami lashes out, ignoring Yukihira’s continuously tightening hold of his extremities. The dark haired man sprawled in front of him twitches the slightest bit, and it’s all the signal Isami needs to tap into his fury once more. He hears a guttural scream and barely processes that it comes from him until Yukihira shouts his name again in order to placate him. He doesn’t understand why Yukihira is so calm, when he has known Megumi the longest, should care about her the most. Shouldn’t he be the one beating Kurokiba to a pulp for failing to protect her from a fucking gun shot?

“Let me go!” Isami seethes out, attempting to reach for the revolver stowed away in the deep recesses of his dark coat.

“Isami.”

There’s a chill in the air he hasn’t felt since he was just a boy. Takumi’s cold voice sends everyone to a halt. Isami can feel his heart pounding behind his ears, but pauses in his movements all the same. It’s the tone his brother uses during meetings with his chiefs of staff, the one that makes sure to remind everyone just how capable the young mafiaso really is.

“Yukihira, let go of him.” Takumi’s words are leveled and firm. Yukihira glances at his hold on the younger Italian, his eyes flitting from the seething brunette to Kurokiba’s shallow breathing. He hesitates for a moment, and it’s enough for Takumi to raise his voice once more. “I said, fucking let go of my brother, Yukihira.”

Yukihira drops his hold almost immediately after, and Isami goes down with it. His legs are shaking, knees giving out on him now that the adrenaline’s slowly seeping out of his body. Deep breaths, he reminds himself, in and out, in and out.

Takumi seizes his elbow harshly, dragging him into a standing position. Isami wobbles a little on his feet and can’t help the scoff from leaving his mouth. Way to remind them all that in spite of his significant height difference from his brother, he’s still the younger one. Isami doesn’t know if the vice grip on his arm is meant to reassure him that it will be fine, he’s there to be his anchor, or to threaten him, not another word Isami, we’ll talk about this later. Knowing his brother, it’s most likely both.

Isami doesn’t struggle, but refuses to mimic Takumi’s move to bow his head towards Alice in apology. Her bright red eyes are trained on him alone and even then he refuses to even meet her head on. He understands her rage, really he does, but he can’t find it in him to actually care. Not when the sheer amount of anger he feels at the moment feels ready to burst.

“I ought to kill your brother right now, Aldini,” she seethes, stepping protectively in front of Kurokiba’s weak body.

“I assure you, proper punishment will be dealt with later.” Isami doesn’t know how Takumi manages to sound so calm. Everything feels so numb that he doesn’t even realize that Takumi has been dragging him out the room far enough that they’ve reached the guest wing where they’ve been staying.

The blonde turns on his heels and looks ready to lash out, but stops himself short. Isami knows it must be something about the way he must be at the moment that leaves Takumi looking broken and lost. They must be thinking the same thing, his fear reflected in identical cerulean orbs.

He remembers Mama.

Takumi is by his side in a heartbeat, holding him close as he muffles his shouts and sobs into Takumi’s shoulder.

He tries to tell himself it’s because the events are so familiar, that he’s afraid to lose another person the same way. Doesn’t want to think of the alternative because that means he’ll only be putting Megumi in more danger than she already is.

one.

She’s playing with Floppy and Bagel when it hits Isami like a freight train. Straight to the gut, knocking the metaphorical wind out of his system as his eyes gradually start widening in shock. There’s nothing particularly special about the day, just another ordinary walk with his dogs and the woman he almost broke a decade’s worth of an alliance for (no big deal).

Jun has already warned her (and him, by extension) that she isn’t supposed to do anything tedious yet. Megumi obviously doesn’t think too much about the shoulder wound to avoid going on walks with some of the most hyperactive dogs she knows. Isami can practically see the look of disapproval the older doctor will be sending his way when the blue haired young woman comes shuffling inside the medic bay in need of new bandages from playing with animals.

Megumi laughs again when Floppy practically hounds on the young nurse to lick sloppy kisses on her face once more that he thinks, oh. He wants to kiss her too.

“Megumi-san,” he calls out to her with no real reason other than he wants her to look his way. Alice is right, Isami thinks, he really does have it bad. He doesn’t actually know what he wants to say next, but when she does look up at him, pretty amber eyes warm and soft in the way the light dances against it—

“May I kiss you?”

He can’t help the way the words roll of his tongue so easily. Megumi pauses, eyes widening and mouth dropping open the tiniest bit in a rush of breath. Her cheeks flush the prettiest red he has ever seen and it takes Isami another moment to actually register what he has said and another, very crucial, second to think of a way to salvage their moment.

“…is, is what Bagel would say!” He immediately holds up the unassuming beagle up to Megumi’s eye level, effectively blocking his view of her adorably shy face. Fuck, he does have it very, very bad and lets out a less-than-chill chuckle as he continues his excuse. “I mean — you’ve been playing with Floppy for a while, I’m sure Bagel’s getting jealous.”

The beagle in question seems to tilt her head to the side, staring curiously at the female before reaching out to tentatively lick her nose. Megumi takes another second before slowly letting out a nervous giggle, higher pitched and essentially slower than usual. Isami’s shoulders visibly deflate in relief when Megumi takes the dog from his hands and holds her up as high as her wounded shoulder will allow her.

“Oh, Bagel,” she coos and brings Bagel closer to her face to leave a soft, small peck on the top of her head, in between her ears. The beagle lets out a ruff in response. Floppy seems to think this conversation needs to include him, because the basset hound whines and bumps his head against Megumi’s calf in order to drive attention back to him. Isami can’t help the grin forming on his face at the sight of her, a little frantic as she tries to show affection to two very demanding dogs.

It all feels so domestic, now that Isami has the guts to think about it seriously. Searching for her to treat small things, accompanying her to her room at night, walking the dogs with her on sunny afternoons. Just the simple feeling of needing to be close to her. Isami feels all the guilt and the heaviness melt away at the sight of Megumi sighing contentedly as she reaches down to scratch Floppy on the back of his ears to try to placate him. He wonders, briefly, if this might be what it would look like should he leave it all behind. He wonders what it would be like for her to run away with him and his dogs and never look back. He wonders if it would be worth it.

Megumi laughs again and smiles at him, her bright eyes crinkling at the sides, and he forgets, momentarily, who he is and where they are and how different their worlds are. Isami’s chest warms.

Yeah, she would be worth it.

“Me too,” he finally, softly says again. When Megumi turns to blink back at him, wide-eyed and innocent and just so fucking beautiful is when he loses it. He sighs and leans in to rest his forehead against hers. Megumi’s face reddens considerably at the movement, but she doesn’t move from her spot next to him. She stammers with nonsensical words and nerves, but doesn’t budge from her spot. Their lips are dangerously close, and Isami can practically taste the cherry-flavoured lip gloss she’s wearing. “I’m a little jealous of them too, Megumi-san.”

“I, uhm, Isami—”

He steals a kiss and drops all pretenses.

[chasholidays]

Bellarke Soulmates au where all your life, you see black & white, and then when you touch your soulmate, you see colors. Please and thanks!

To Bellamy, not having a soulmate sometimes feels like knowing the setup for a joke and never hearing the punchline.

Not, admittedly, that he knows he doesn’t have a soulmate. He’s only thirty, and plenty of people find their soulmates at that age or later. It’s just that it seems easier, at this point in his life, to assume that no one is coming along, that he’s going to be one of those people who never gets that.

In some ways, it’s not hard to fake it. He knows that leaves are supposed to be green, and the sky is supposed to be blue. The rug in his apartment is brown, which is the same color as dirt and tree bark and his eyes. Apples are red or sometimes green, and traffic light colors are always in the same order: red at the top, then yellow, then green.

But he’s getting to the age where a lot of people he knows have soulmates, where a world without color is becoming the exception, rather than the norm. He has to fake it now, because if strangers find out he can’t see colors, it changes things. People will feel sorry for him, and that’s even worse than not having a soulmate.

It’s not as if he isn’t happy, honestly. It’s not as if not having a soulmate is this great blight on his life. But he’ll be out with his coworkers, and someone will ask which color was most surprising, when they first saw it, or they’ll try to describe what fall leaves look like, and he just has to nod and smile and hope no one asks him too many specific questions.

His favorite color is blue, and if he never sees it, he still thinks it’s a pretty good favorite color. From what he’s heard.

It’s three weeks after his birthday when Miller finds his soulmate, a cute, geeky kid named Monty, and Bellamy tries not to be too bitter.

“Is it as awesome as everyone says?” he asks.

Miller takes a sip of beer. “Which part, love or color?”

“Color. I’ve been in love before.”

Miller doesn’t call him out on that one; soulmate love is supposed to be unlike anything else, but Miller is still new to it. He and Monty haven’t really had time to do much more than meet each other.

“It’s kind of like looking up the answers at the end of the book,” he decides, his tone thoughtful. “Except you never did any work for the class and the whole thing is basically a mindfuck. Like, you didn’t know enough to have any idea what the answers would even look like.”

That actually does make some sense to him, even if he doesn’t entirely get it. But, like Miller said, he doesn’t really have the full picture. He doesn’t feel as if he has the capacity to know what he’s missing.

“So, it’s cool?” he asks.

“Yeah. But if I never got it—“ He shrugs. “You’re still good.”

“I am,” he agrees, and can’t help a teasing smirk. “So, what, you think it’s never going to happen for me? Already giving up?”

Miller rolls his eyes. “Who the fuck wants to put up with you their whole life?”

It’s a joke, and he knows it, but it still feels a little like it’s not. Which isn’t Miller’s fault; this is his insecurity.

“That’s the question,” he says, making sure it sounds like a joke too. “Guess we’ll find out.”

*

Two weeks later, his sister’s soulmate has a show that seems custom-designed to make him feel shittier.

Of course he knows that’s not actually what happened; the world does not revolve around him. The decision had nothing to do with him at all. And it’s honestly a cool idea: Lincoln collaborated with a friend of his who doesn’t have her soulmate yet, and they both produced paintings with the same colors and themes, something like a before-and-after game. Even without being able to see the “real” colors, Bellamy will be able to appreciate the differences in shade and design. It won’t be entirely lost on him.

It’s still tempting to just skip out, but he likes Lincoln, and Octavia will definitely notice if he isn’t there, and will guess why and have opinions about it.

So he’d better just go.

“This is actually going to be cool,” Octavia says, way too brightly. Lincoln is busy with setup, so she’s having dinner with him, Miller, and Monty before they go to the opening event at the gallery.

“As opposed to all Lincoln’s other, shitty art?” Bellamy teases.

She rolls her eyes. “Not that. But it’ll be cool to see what it’s like for you. Everyone else can see the colors, but you have the other perspective.”

“Lucky me.”

“You’re going to find them,” O says, like this is a certainty. “But for now, it’s cool. We’ll get the full experience.”

And Bellamy has to admit, it is cool. The paintings are side-by-side, with detailed breakdowns of what the instructions were and what colors were used next to them, and it’s interesting to see how much better the shades of gray on Clarke Griffin’s paintings look to him than the ones on Lincoln’s do. He’s seen art done by people without soulmates before, but they tend to work in actual grayscale, avoiding colors which they can’t actually distinguish for just this reason.

“Does it work?” he asks his sister. “Clarke Griffin’s stuff.”

“Kind of. It’s not–it feels like what you’d do if you didn’t have enough colors to pick from, I guess? Like, the sky is blue, but it doesn’t really look like the right blue.”

“It looks like the right blue to me,” he says. “I like it.”

“Thanks,” says a voice, and Bellamy turns and bumps his shoulder against this unfamiliar girl who’s standing too close, and all at once the world is bursting into what he knows must be color.

It’s as hard to explain as everyone’s always said it was, because he’s trying to put together references he didn’t even entirely know he was missing. The woman’s hair is light, probably blonde, and her skin is pale too, but he has no idea what color her eyes are, or what color her scarf is. Her shirt is gray, which is familiar, but even that shade has these nuances he didn’t know about, these other colors he can’t identify yet.

He looks down, remembering that his shirt is blue, and he does like the shade. That’s a relief.

Then he looks back at the woman, who’s not looking at him anymore either.

“Oh my god, it looks so different.”

He follows her gaze to the paintings on the wall, and she’s right, of course; the pleasing patterns of gray have been replaced by other, unknown colors that are, for reasons he can’t even begin to articulate, less appealing together than the colors he saw before were.

“You’re the artist?” he asks, although he already knows.

“And you’re my soulmate,” she says.

“She’s your what?” asks Octavia. “Bell, you can–”

“You’re losing your alternate perspective on the show, yeah,” he says. “This is my soulmate.”

*

Meeting Clarke is almost more surreal than being able to see colors, but the colors make for a much easier topic of conversation. And it’s a good way to get to know her, too, since they’re walking around her art show, looking at her paintings, and she’s regretting everything about her choices.

It’s kind of adorable, honestly.

“Seriously, that’s what green looks like?” she laments, signing at her painting of a flower next to Lincoln’s. “That’s not what I pictured.”

“Could you actually picture them?” he asks, curious. “Like–did you know how to imagine it?”

“Not like this. I guess I kind of–” She laughs, this soft, almost shy sound that makes his heart twist. “I thought a lot about it, I guess? And people try to tell me, other artists, but–I had no idea there would be so many.”

He smiles. “Yeah, I know what you mean. At least we’re in the right place for it.”

“Right place?”

He takes the excuse to move a little closer to her, leaning in so he can point to the card by the pieces. “They’re all labeled so we know what colors they are.”

That makes her laugh again. “Yeah, we’ve got a cheat sheet. And it does help. I can see how this green Lincoln used is in the same color family as mine, but his has more yellow in it.” She shakes her head. “God, it’s so weird. Finally seeing–I’ve studied color theory, I know exactly how it’s supposed to work, that you can mix blue and red to make purple, and I know how it works with black and white and shades of gray, but–this is so much more.”

“So, you want to leave the gallery and go play around with paint mixing, right?” he teases.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, but you do.”

“Can you tell that because you’re my soulmate?” she asks.

“Or it’s really obvious.” He wets his lips. “I don’t mind, if you want to go. I assume we’re going to see more of each other.”

“Yeah.” It’s her turn to pause, deliberate, lip caught in her teeth. He’s looking forward to learning all of her little quirks. “Or you could come with me.”

“If I leave with you, my little sister is definitely going to think I’m going to get laid,” he says.

“She’s Lincoln’s soulmate, right? He said she was–” She tries to find the right word. “Opinionated.”

“She’s a pain in my ass,” he grumbles, but he knows how fond it sounds.

“Is it bad?” she asks. “If she thinks you’re getting laid. I wasn’t ruling that out.”

His mouth tugs up. “No, neither was I. Let me get my coat.”

Clarke’s studio isn’t far, and she slides her hand into his as they walk, small and warm, and he squeezes her fingers. “Demographic stuff?” he asks.

“Hmm?”

“Where are you from?”

“California. I came up here for school and never left. You?”

“Here. I just never left. How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven. You?”

“I turned thirty last month. I had a kind of minor I’m never going to find my soulmate crisis going on.”

“Yeah?”

“Miller and Monty just met, and O and Lincoln haven’t been together that long either, just about six months. It was starting to feel like I was the last one left who didn’t have mine.”

“But now you do.”

He still can’t quite believe it. He’s walking down the street with a beautiful woman who was meant to be his, and even in the dark, at night, the world is full of so many colors. He can’t believe there are this many. It doesn’t seem possible.

“Now I do.”

She unlocks the door to the studio, gives him a quick tour, but the main event is the rows of paints, all bright colors in a row. They pull them down and examine them, getting the feeling of pink and turquoise, these things he understood as theory, as words, but not as reality.

“Can you believe every single shade has a name?” she asks, running her fingers over the labels with awe. “And you can mix them all, and they’ll all be different?”

He laughs. “It’s pretty unbelievable, yeah.” And then, he can’t help adding, “You really must be my soulmate.”

“That’s how it works, yeah.”

“No, I meant–don’t get me wrong, you’re awesome, so far. But I always kind of wondered about the colors more. Even if I never found my soulmate, I figured I could fall in love. But I’d never know what this stuff was like, not really. So I’m glad that’s the big draw for you.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” she says. “You seem pretty great too. But I’m glad you wanted to bail and come play with paint with me.”

Tentatively, he puts his arm around her, and when she leans back into him, he tugs her closer, kisses her hair. She smells light and fresh and a little like the chill of the air, and she’s his, somehow.

The world is new and bright and beautiful, in a way he didn’t even know how to imagine.

“Yeah,” he says. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

[carmichael-psychology]

How To Deal With Toxic People (And Why You Really Need To)

In an ideal world, all of the people in your life would be helpful resources, willingly by your side to provide support, add joy, and keep you balanced. But let’s face it: We don’t live in an ideal world (if we did, I’d probably be out of a job!). Most of us will encounter at least one person in our day-to-day at some point in our lives who does the opposite.  Someone who drains your energy, undermines you, puts you down. I’ve recently been asked to speak about the topic of “toxic people” by FOX5 here in New York, and while “toxic people” isn’t a clinical term… I think I sort of knew what they meant. Toxic people chip away at your mental health and overall wellbeing, and the longer they’re in your life, the more damaging their emotional footprint can be.

Here’s the good news: You don’t need to tolerate behavior you find unacceptable! In fact, it is not only your right but your responsibility to limit their role in your life or remove them from it entirely. If you’re labeling someone or something as “toxic”, it’s part of your duty of self-care to manage the situation carefully. Plus, keeping someone around whom you actually dislike because you’re “too nice” to be truthful with them or at least quit engaging with them isn’t doing them any favors, either: Letting the toxic dynamic continue without giving them feedback will only encourage them to pursue and maintain unhealthy relationships with others.  Plus, it can be seen as a form passive aggression on your part if you consciously allow someone you actively dislike to continue becoming more vulnerable to you as they mistakenly persist in a misapprehension that you’re friends.  So whether you’re dealing with a sorta-toxic coworker or a so-toxic-it’s-traumatic partner, a “frenemie” friend… or even a toxic family member, here’s a guide to help.

1. Identify the problem.

This sounds like such a “duh!” step, but it’s one we tend to skip because it requires getting very real. First, you have to finally acknowledge the source of toxicity. This person can be a friend, a romantic partner, a relative, a colleague—no one’s off limits. And there’s a spectrum, which I like to break into three levels:

Level 0: The NON-toxic person. This is someone whom you may be accidentally mis-labeling as toxic. They may just have different values, beliefs, communication styles, or expectations than you. This person may even be a little intrusive or annoying, but this person is actually NOT really a “toxic person”. You’re just regarding them as toxic because you haven’t figured out how to set limits or communicate your needs with them. (Examples: A friend who always brings you down by constantly complaining about everything, yet you’ve never said to the friend, “Hey would you mind if we focus on the positives today? I’m trying to keep on the bright side here!” Or a friend who “bothers” you by calling waaay too often, yet you just keep blithely answering all their calls and carrying on unbearably mundane phone conversations without ever mentioning that you’re actually not a lover of long phone chats– how are they to know if you’ve never told them?)

Level 1: Mildly Toxic. Someone who is basically harmless, but who regularly uses energy-draining interpersonal antics: They may have a markedly dismissive attitude, regularly make snide remarks, pester you to do (generally harmless) things like meet for coffee even when you’ve made it clear you’d rather not, constantly try to “one-up” you, or place unreasonable demands on your time (or money). You’ve tried having heart-to-hearts to see if you can agree on a more respectful way of relating, but the person just becomes angry, refuses to take any ownership, or seems like they “get it” but then continues the same pattern without any actual willingness to continue working on it.

In my experience, all of us are likely to encounter at least one person like this in our lifetime. If you’re anxious about setting limits, try to think of this as a “training ground” opportunity, since learning to set basic limits is an important life skill. You don’t have to do it perfectly, and yes the person might get a little upset- but that’s their right, and learning to express yourself in an assertive-yet-courteous way will take you far in life.

Level 2: Toxic This moving beyond the Level 1 behaviors by violating boundaries in a more intense way. Someone who threatens to end the relationship whenever they don’t get their way, text-bombs you with angry and disrespectful messages over relatively little things (think ten text messages in an hour), or who finds other ways of objectively sabotaging your well-being (such as pressuring you to drink more than you’d like, or belittling your goals and ambitions) would be traversing from Level 1 to Level 2. They may ironically flip things around on you as well, such as playing the victim and lamenting that you have “thrown their friendship away” when actually all you’ve done is decline to respond to their abusive text message telling you they were “done with you”.

Such a person may also call you names when they’re angry, or say nasty things about your appearance; or disrespect your time or property (such as being unavailable to return items they’ve borrowed, constantly canceling or delaying plans moments before or even during the time you were supposed to meet, acting entitled to stay at your apartment or visit with you whenever they’re in town or it’s convenient for them even if you’ve explained it’s not a good weekend; or pressuring you to spend money on entertainment you’ve explained you can’t really afford).

Level 3: REALLY Toxic. Being physically abusive, stealing from you, verbally threatening you, or doing other things that are so intense they’re actually oftentimes against the law to do to another person. This category is actually the shortest and simplest to describe, since there’s really no “grey area” about these things– they’re clearly easy to recognize as 100% toxic.

Moving forward from a Toxic Person

Once you’ve ID’d the problem, the next step is to consider why you’ve allowed this toxicity to exist in your life. Oftentimes, we keep toxic people around because they’ve been in our lives for so long, it feels like our only option is to accept their behavior and make peace with it (for the sake of your history together). Other times, we let them bully us, physically or emotionally, because we’re too scared to speak up or don’t know how to set and enforce boundaries. And other times still, we almost like the toxicity or drama, because it’s become something we’re used to and we prefer familiarity over the unknown.

Repeat after me: None of these are good enough reasons to keep a toxic person around. Ready to set some boundaries? Read on!

2.Take action!

The best way to know if someone who you think is toxic is actually toxic—as in, unwilling to fix their behavior in order to improve the relationship—is to give them a real chance to change their behavior. Initiate a chat about what’s been going on—if they only respond with more toxicity from the get-go, that can actually help give you the clarity you need to move forward (possibly without them!).

Many of the clients in my practice are dealing with non-toxic or just mildly toxic behaviors, and honestly I think those can ironically be some of the most difficult to navigate— when someone is clearly being abusive, it’s actually easier to cut them out of your life. On the other hand, when someone is just a little manipulative or a “drama queen”, more nuanced strategies are sometimes helpful. Here are a few to get you started:

For a friendship you’ve outgrown: “I feel like things have changed in my life since when we first met many years ago, and I’m no longer interested in X. If you want to change with me, awesome. If not, I just want you to understand why there might be some distance as we move forward and possibly grow apart.”

For someone who seems constantly down on you: “For all of the negative things you say to me these days, I’m starting to wonder if you really get that much pleasure from hanging out with me; and honestly it doesn’t feel great to me either, since you seem to disagree with so many basic things about me. You have a right to your opinion on my hair/ weight/ job/ life, but I’m just not sure it’s healthy for either of us to continue spending so much time together if you find so many things about me to be so bothersome to you, especially since the things that bother you are not things I have any plan or interest in changing… and even if I did, I still wouldn’t appreciate feeling like it’s always open-season for commentary about my issues.”

For someone who constantly guilts you for not being able to spend as much time together as they’d like: “I really value all of our memories together and I don’t want there to be any hard feelings, but I don’t think I can live up to your expectations as they are now. There’s nothing wrong with what you seem to want in terms of a friend who is always able to return same-day texts and visit on a weekly basis, but there’s also nothing wrong with someone like me who is only open for less frequent contact for whatever reason. Could we talk about what we both seem to need and then see if we still think this makes sense for both of us? No hard feelings either way, I just think it’s best if we can be open with each other about whatever the situation is.”

For Level 2 toxic behaviors: Remember: You always have the right to end a relationship. But if you’d like to try setting some firmer limits instead of ending the relationship, you might try something like,

“I need to talk with you about something important: I’ve realized that I’ve allowed certain things to happen in our relationship that are actually really unhealthy for me, and I want you to know I’ve realized it’s my responsibility to stop allowing those things if I find them unacceptable. I may never have told you this, but when you do X it affects me in the following way: ______. So, next time X happens, I will (end our visit, block your texts for a while, stop chasing after you, put some distance between us, or whatever response seems logical– if you need help thinking of what’s logical, feel free to ask a trusted friend, therapist, or coach!).

For a Level 3 toxic person: In many cases, it’s best to cut off contact with someone like this– and please remember you always have the option to do this if you wish, no matter whom the person is– but in situations such as an adult child or a family member who is struggling with addiction, we may sometimes decide that we’d prefer to learn hard boundaries instead (ie “You can stay in my life and we can interact when you’re sober, but if you steal from me I will call the police; and if you call me any names whatsoever our visit will end immediately.” or “I’ll visit with you, but only when someone else I trust is present; and if you become physically aggressive I will call the police.”). Please seek a professional or call 911 if you need help at any point!

Many people in my office fear conversations like the ones above because they’re afraid of upsetting the person. They often feel better when they remember that actually, if the toxic person gets really mad and ends the relationship, guess what? They just made things easier on you. I know it’s tough, but at least you’ve freed yourself from the toxicity—and the charade of a healthy relationship. You’ve now made more time for all the other genuine and healthy connections in your life—go, you!

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Okay, Dr. Chloe, it’s not always that simple. What do I do if the toxic person is someone I can’t cut out—like, you know, my mother-in-law?” And that’s a great Q. First, be sure to schedule in some time for self-love whenever you have to be around that person, since being around crazy can make you feel kinda crazy (you know what I mean). Try scheduling a massage or dinner with your best friends to happen shortly after the visit, since they’ll help keep you grounded and give you a chance to unpack whatever happened.

Would you like to learn more about my acronym T.O.X.I.C., which offers steps to set limits with toxic people?  Check out Part 2 of this series on How to Deal with Toxic People!

Would you like to learn more about setting boundaries, especially with people you feel you can’t cut out of your life? Check out my blog on surviving the holidays with your family… even if it’s not the holidays, and even if the people you need to set limits with aren’t family, the tips in this blog will work all year ‘round!

How to Survive the Holiday Season With Your Family

To see Dr. Chloe’s helpful blogs on anxiety, relationships, and career issues please see her blogs! Click here

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[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/jim-beaver-supernatural-talk-jensen-ackles-jared-padalecki/

Jim Beaver 'Supernatural' talk on Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki

When one of our Movie TV Tech Geeks family members has something new out, we love to help promote it, especially when it's something that every Supernatural fan will want to get their hands on. Lynn Zubernis, who writes some pretty in-depth and intense Supernatural recap reviews, has her latest book hitting on May 9 Family Don’t End With Blood: Cast and Fans on How Supernatural Has Changed Lives (You can order it here), has interviewed nearly everyone from the show, and we're happy to run her 'best ofs' leading up to her book launch. If you want to attend her Los Angeles book launch check it out here. Her latest book features With contributions by Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Misha Collins, Mark Sheppard, Jim Beaver, Rob Benedict, Briana Buckmaster, Osric Chau, Matt Cohen, Ruth Connell, Gil McKinney, Rachel Miner and Kim Rhodes, and a Dozen Passionate Fans! Check out her classic interview with Misha Collins. Check out when we interviewed Lynn on her own Supernatural experiences. Check out exclusive excerpts from Lynn’s upcoming book! Next up, Jim Beaver (Bobby Singer), who wrote an incredibly powerful chapter for Family Don’t End With Blood. Here’s one of our favorite interview chats we’ve had with Jim over the years… As promised, more from our trip to the Chicago Supernatural convention – in this case, some quality time with one of our favorite guys, Jim Beaver. Jim is one of the first actors we interviewed two years ago at the start of our Supernatural road trip, and damn, he really skewed our expectations. Not only did he invite us to come over and chat in his living room, but four hours later, we were still there! That conversation took place before Jim’s very first fan convention, so we spent some of the time trying to prepare him. (Yes, fans will line up for your autograph – little did he know!). Jim asked us as many questions about the fandom as we asked him, and we weren’t surprised that he ‘got it’ in so many ways. We also managed to get in a dare before we left, but honestly, we never expected Jim to be so creative in his tee shirt design. O—o We missed sitting down with Jim at the last convention, because he was still signing autographs at 2 am and we were falling over with exhaustion. (So much for his disbelief that fans would line up for his autograph! ) Not surprisingly, his photo ops and autographs ran late in Chicago as well. Jim’s determination to give each and every fan some quality time was once again working against our chances of reconnecting with him. When 1:00 a.m. rolled around, and the other celebs had finished their turns at ‘speed dating with the stars,’ at the dessert party, we were ready to bail. (The desire for sleep does sometimes prevail!) Disappointed, we headed back to our room and walked smack into Jim who was being shepherded downstairs to make his belated appearance. So much for sleep. Jim never sleeps, as anyone who’s friended him on Facebook has probably figured out, and apparently he never eats either. After making the rounds with the die-hard fans who waited for him at the dessert party, he was handed a chicken Caesar salad by one of the Creation staff. He had every intention of eating it after he said goodnight to Richard Speight Jr and Aldis Hodge in the bar. Somehow that turned into a few rounds of pool and by 2:30 that chicken Caesar was looking less than savory. When we all finally collapsed in the corner table of the deserted lobby bar, poor Jim was starving and lacking food options. But fandom is a curious and wonderful thing. Suddenly there were fans. With meat. In fact, they appeared with an entire deli platter and asked if we wanted it. (Whoever you are out there, thank you!) Interviews with Jim tend to run the gamut from serious contemplation of the nature of fame and celebrity and fannishness to the kind of joking around that invariably makes Lynn do that embarrassing snort-when-you-laugh thing. This one took place at 3 am, so there was a lot more of the joking and less of the seriousness. Jim has mentioned before that while Bobby has evolved into a father figure for Sam and Dean, he has a different relationship with Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles. Much more a peer relationship than a fatherly one – in fact, Jim asks the boys for professional advice more often than the other way around. Lynn commented around her ham sandwich that Jim obviously wasn’t old enough to be their father in real life anyway, which earned her an eye roll and an incredulous smirk. In one of our earlier chats with Jim, he talked about Bobby’s relationship with ‘the boys,’ and his delight in playing such a character. Jim: “It’s often alot funnier to be the guy standing there looking at somebody going, ‘you moron,' than to be the guy doing the funny stuff. Somebody did a YouTube tribute to Bobby, and I was looking at it last night. I watched the clips fade, and I knew exactly what it was — it was a look I gave Jared when I was working on a gun. I was saying, ‘and it’s gonna take me as long as it takes me.’ And he asked if it was ready and I just gave this look. That kind of stuff is delicious. And a lot more fun than being the guy saying ‘Hey Bobby, is it ready?’ I can’t imagine anything more delightful than playing this guy.” Much to our amusement, Jim also brought up the power of subtext, a topic with which most Supernatural fans are quite familiar. When Jim took his turn at playing The Trickster in Season 3, he relied on the subtle nonverbal nuances that the Supernatural actors are so damn good at to give the viewer cues that Bobby is not who he appears to be. Jim: “I’ve always thought the best actors know something you don’t know. Like they’ve got a secret, and it may never get revealed. The best people I’ve seen act, I’m seeing all this stuff and there’s something underneath too, and it makes me want to watch and figure it out. Just to convey that there’s something going on other than just the words. I love to find bits of subtext that didn’t occur to me before. Subtext is great. My favorite movie in the world is John Ford’s The Searchers. The driving force is John Wayne’s love for his brother’s wife and vice versa. It’s the thing that drives virtually everything that happens to the main characters. And there is not one bit of dialogue actually relating that. You see the looks between the characters, you see his reaction when she dies, you see, but nobody says a word about it.” There followed a long conversation about Freudian interpretations of Sam and Dean and long looks and nonverbal cues, which eventually got around to a discussion of Jensen and Jared’s acting ability. Jim: “It wouldn’t work if these guys weren’t good actors. I think you could do an episode of Supernatural without a single word of dialogue with this bunch. Not for the gimmick value, but because the crew on this show is capable of doing an awful lot of expression non-verbally, and making people really think deeply about what is being conveyed with no words. I did an episode of Melrose Place, and I wouldn’t want to do an episode with no dialog with them. But on this show, we feed off each other pretty well. The fact that we all like each other is helpful, but it’s also the fact that Jared, Jensen and I must be very similar actors. We all three are the kind that can be joking around, and then they say action, and we are in it. None of us are the kind of guy that has to sit in a corner for an hour to get ready. Nothing wrong with that, but we’re just very attuned to the same kind of work. We just kind of relate to each other in ways that work well, and fit well. That the boys are good buddies and enjoy each other’s company, that too is not all that common. Sometimes magic hits. I don’t know if there is any coincidence that there are three guys whose names all start with J and are all from Texas. I feel like I’ve got a couple good friends in Jared and Jensen. And to a certain extent, you can’t fake that chemistry. I feel pretty lucky to be a part of it.” Jim did get serious at our late night (early morning?) dinner chat in Chicago when he talked about the challenge of his character being confined to a wheelchair, though, saying how tough it was to have to stay down all the time, to not be able to move around like you’re used to. (In our experience, Jim rarely stays still for long – where does the guy get all that energy??) Jim’s capacity for empathy is clearly one of the abilities that make him a kickass actor, and he went on to say that as difficult as it is playing Bobby in a wheelchair, he was always acutely aware that he could get up when they called ‘cut.’ He went on to say that Jared and Jensen delighted in ribbing him during some scenes where Bobby’s bare legs are showing as he’s sitting in the wheelchair in a hospital scene, taunting him about how pale and white his legs were. “So I explained to them,” he continued, voice growing serious, “that when I was in the POW camp, one of the things they did to us was they used bleach on our legs….and it was horrible….they’ll always be white like this because of that.” Lynn stared at him dumbfounded, mouth open in horror, trying frantically to remember whether Jim had ever spoken about being a POW before, wondering how Jim had survived, what kinds of scars – when Jim suddenly burst into laughter, slapped her on the knee and yelled “Gotcha!” Apparently, he got Jensen and Jared too. This time we’re glad we stayed up until 4 am. Totally worth it! We will continue through the launch of Lynn’s book with some of her best Supernatural interviews. Check out Misha’s chapter – along with many other cast and fan chapters – in Family Don’t End With Blood. You can pre-order it here.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

[sheminecrafts]

Instagram founders say losing autonomy at Facebook meant “winning”

Rather than be sore about losing independence within Facebook, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told me it was an inevitable sign of his app’s triumph. Today at South By South West, Systrom and fellow co-founder Mike Krieger sat down for their first on-stage talk together since leaving Facebook in September. They discussed their super hero origin stories, authenticity on social media, looming regulation for big tech, and how they’re exploring what they’ll do next.

Krieger grew up hitting “view source” on websites while Systrom hacked on AOL booter programs that would kick people off instant messenger, teaching both how code could impact real people. As Instagram grew popular, Krieger described the “incredi-bad” feeling of fighting server fires and trying to keep the widely loved app online even if that meant programming in the middle of a sushi restaurant or camping retreat. He once even revived Instagram while drunk in the middle of the night, and woke up with no memory of the feat, confused about who’d fixed the problem. The former Instagram CTO implored founders not to fall into the “recruiting death spiral” where you’re too busy to recruit which makes you busier which makes you too busy to recruit…

But thankfully, the founders were also willing to dig into some tougher topics than their scrappy startup days.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (from left) drive to Palo Alto to raise their Series A, circa January 2011

Independence vs Importance.

“In some ways, there being less autonomy is a function of Instagram winning. If Instagram had just been this niche photo app for photographers, we probably would be working on that app for 20 year. Instead what happened was it got better and better and better, and it improved, and it got to a size where it was meaningfully important to this company” Systrom explained. “If this thing gets to that scale that we want it to get to which is why we’re doing this deal, the autonomy will eventually not be there as much because it’s so important. So in some ways it’s just an unavoidable thing if you’re successful. So you can choose, do you want to be unsuccessful and small and have all the autonomy in the world, or no?”

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Mike Krieger speaks onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger followed up that “I think if you study . . . all the current companies, the ones that succeed internally eventually have become so important to the acquiring company that it’s almost irresponsible to not be thinking about what are the right models for integration. The advice I generally give is, ‘are you okay with that if you succeed?’ And if you’re not then you shouldn’t do the deal.” If the loss of autonomy can’t be avoided, they suggest selling to a rocket ship that will invest in and care for your baby rather than shift priorities.

Asked if seeing his net worth ever feels surreal, Systrom said  money doesn’t make you happy and “I don’t really wake up in the morning and look at my bank account.” I noted that’s the convenient privilege of having a big one.

The pair threw cold water on the idea that being forced to earn more money drove them out of the company. “I remember having this series of conversations with Mark and other folks at Facebook and they’re like ‘You guys just joined, do not worry about monetization, we’ll figure this out down the road.’ And it actually came a lot more from us saying “1. It’s important for us to be contributing to the overall Fb Inc . . . and 2. Each person who joins before you have ads is a person you’re going to have to introduce ads to.” Systrom added that “to be clear, we were the ones pushing monetization, not the other way around, because we believed Instagram has to make money somehow. It costs a lot to run . . . We pushed hard on it so that we would be a successful unit within Facebook and I think we got to that point, which is really good.”

But from 2015 to 2016, Instagram’s remaining independence fueled a reinvention of its app with non-square photos, the shift to the algorithm, and the launch of Stories. On having to challenge the fundamental assumptions of a business, “You’ve got maybe a couple years of relevance when you build a product. If you don’t reinvent it every quarter or every year, then you fall out of relevance and you go away.”

That last launch was inspired by wanting to offer prismatic identity where people could share non-highlights that wouldn’t haunt them. But also, Systrom admits that “Honestly a big reason why was that for a long time, people’s profiles were filled with Snapchat links and it was clear that people were trying to bridge the two products. So by bringing the two products [Feed and Stories] into one place, we gave consumers what they wanted.” Though when I asked anyone in the crowd who was still mad about the algorithm to hiss, SXSW turned into a snake pit.

Regulating Big Tech

With Systrom and Krieger gone, Facebook is moving forward with plans to more tightly integrate Instagram with Facebook and WhatsApp. That includes unifying their messaging system, which some say is designed to make Facebook’s apps harder to break up with anti-trust regulation. What does Systrom think of the integration? “The more people that are available to talk with, the more useful the platform becomes. And I buy that thesis . . . Whether or not they will in fact want to talk to people on different platforms, I can’t tell the future, so I don’t know” Systrom said.

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Josh Constine, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom speak onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger recommended Facebook try to prove users want that cross-app messaging before embarking on a giant engineering challenge of merging their backends. When I asked if Systrom ever had a burning desire to Instagram Direct message a WhatsApp user, he admitted “Personally, no.” But in a show of respect and solid media training, he told his former employer “Bravo for making a big bet and going for it.”

Then it was time for the hardest hitting question: their thoughts on Presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to regulate big tech and roll back Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram. “Do we get our job back?” Systrom joked, trying to diffuse the tension. Krieger urged more consideration of downstream externalities, and specificity on what problem a break up fixes. He wants differentiation between regulating Facebook’s acquisitions, Amazon white-labeling and selling products, and Apple’s right to run the only iOS App Store.

Acquisition vs Competition

“We live in a time where I think the anger against big tech has increased ten-fold — whether that’s because the property prices in your neighborhood have gone up, whether it’s because you don’t like Russian meddling in elections — there are a long list of reasons people are angry at tech right now and some of them I think are well-founded” Systrom confirmed. “That doesn’t mean that the answer is to break all the companies up. Breaking companies up is a very specific prescription for a very specific problem. If you want to fix economic issues there are ways of doing that. If you want to fix Russian meddling there are ways of doing that. Breaking up a company doesn’t fix those problems. That doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t be broken up if they get too big and they’re monopolies and they cause problems, but being big in and of itself is not a crime.”

attends Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas

Systrom then took a jab at Warren’s tech literacy, saying “part of what’s surprised me is that generally the policy is all tech should be broken up, and that feels to me again not nuanced enough and it shows me that the understanding of the problem isn’t there. I think it’s going to take a more nuanced proposal, but my fear is that something like a proposal to break up all tech is playing on everyone’s current feeling of anti-tech rather than doing what I think politicians should do which is address real problems and give real solutions.”

The two founders then gave some pretty spurious logic for why Instagram’s acquisition helped consumers. “As someone who ran the company for how many years inside of Facebook? Six? There was a lot of competition internally even and I think better ideas came out because of it. We grew both companies not just one company. It’s really hard question. What consumer was damaged because it grew to the size that it did? I think that’s a strong argument that in fact the acquisition worked out for consumers.” That ignores the fact that if Instagram and Facebook were rivals, they’d have to compete on privacy and treating their users well. Even if they inspired each other to build more engaging products, that doesn’t address where harm to consumers has been done.

Krieger suggested that the acquisition actually spurred competition by making Instagram a role modeI. “There was a gold rush of companies being like ‘I’m going to be the Instagram of X . . . the Instagram of Audio, the Instagram of video, the Instagram of dog photos.’ You saw people start new companies and try to build them out in order to try to achieve what we’ve gotten to.” Yet no startup besides Snapchat, which had already launched, has actually grown to rival Instagram. And seeing Instagram hold its own against the Facebook empire would have likely inspired many more startups — some of which can’t find funding since investors doubt their odds against a combined Facebook and Instagram

As for what’s next for the college buddies, “we’re giving ourselves the time to get curious about things again” Krieger says. They’re still exploring so there was no big reveal about their follow-up venture. But Systrom says they built Instagram by finding the mega-trend of cameras on phones and asking what they’d want to use, “and the question is, what’s the next wave?”

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/2J5u0dO via IFTTT

[technicalsolutions88]

Rather than be sore about losing independence within Facebook, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told me it was an inevitable sign of his app’s triumph. Today at South By South West, Systrom and fellow co-founder Mike Krieger sat down for their first on-stage talk together since leaving Facebook in September. They discussed their super hero origin stories, authenticity on social media, looming regulation for big tech, and how they’re exploring what they’ll do next.

Krieger grew up hitting “view source” on websites while Systrom hacked on AOL booter programs that would kick people off instant messenger, teaching both how code could impact real people. As Instagram grew popular, Krieger described the “incredi-bad” feeling of fighting server fires and trying to keep the widely loved app online even if that meant programming in the middle of a sushi restaurant or camping retreat. He once even revived Instagram while drunk in the middle of the night, and woke up with no memory of the feat, confused about who’d fixed the problem. The former Instagram CTO implored founders not to fall into the “recruiting death spiral” where you’re too busy to recruit which makes you busier which makes you too busy to recruit…

But thankfully, the founders were also willing to dig into some tougher topics than their scrappy startup days.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (from left) drive to Palo Alto to raise their Series A, circa January 2011

Independence vs Importance.

“In some ways, there being less autonomy is a function of Instagram winning. If Instagram had just been this niche photo app for photographers, we probably would be working on that app for 20 year. Instead what happened was it got better and better and better, and it improved, and it got to a size where it was meaningfully important to this company” Systrom explained. “If this thing gets to that scale that we want it to get to which is why we’re doing this deal, the autonomy will eventually not be there as much because it’s so important. So in some ways it’s just an unavoidable thing if you’re successful. So you can choose, do you want to be unsuccessful and small and have all the autonomy in the world, or no?”

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Mike Krieger speaks onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger followed up that “I think if you study . . . all the current companies, the ones that succeed internally eventually have become so important to the acquiring company that it’s almost irresponsible to not be thinking about what are the right models for integration. The advice I generally give is, ‘are you okay with that if you succeed?’ And if you’re not then you shouldn’t do the deal.” If the loss of autonomy can’t be avoided, they suggest selling to a rocket ship that will invest in and care for your baby rather than shift priorities.

Asked if seeing his net worth ever feels surreal, Systrom said  money doesn’t make you happy and “I don’t really wake up in the morning and look at my bank account.” I noted that’s the convenient privilege of having a big one.

The pair threw cold water on the idea that being forced to earn more money drove them out of the company. “I remember having this series of conversations with Mark and other folks at Facebook and they’re like ‘You guys just joined, do not worry about monetization, we’ll figure this out down the road.’ And it actually came a lot more from us saying “1. It’s important for us to be contributing to the overall Fb Inc . . . and 2. Each person who joins before you have ads is a person you’re going to have to introduce ads to.” Systrom added that “to be clear, we were the ones pushing monetization, not the other way around, because we believed Instagram has to make money somehow. It costs a lot to run . . . We pushed hard on it so that we would be a successful unit within Facebook and I think we got to that point, which is really good.”

But from 2015 to 2016, Instagram’s remaining independence fueled a reinvention of its app with non-square photos, the shift to the algorithm, and the launch of Stories. On having to challenge the fundamental assumptions of a business, “You’ve got maybe a couple years of relevance when you build a product. If you don’t reinvent it every quarter or every year, then you fall out of relevance and you go away.”

That last launch was inspired by wanting to offer prismatic identity where people could share non-highlights that wouldn’t haunt them. But also, Systrom admits that “Honestly a big reason why was that for a long time, people’s profiles were filled with Snapchat links and it was clear that people were trying to bridge the two products. So by bringing the two products [Feed and Stories] into one place, we gave consumers what they wanted.” Though when I asked anyone in the crowd who was still mad about the algorithm to hiss, SXSW turned into a snake pit.

Regulating Big Tech

With Systrom and Krieger gone, Facebook is moving forward with plans to more tightly integrate Instagram with Facebook and WhatsApp. That includes unifying their messaging system, which some say is designed to make Facebook’s apps harder to break up with anti-trust regulation. What does Systrom think of the integration? “The more people that are available to talk with, the more useful the platform becomes. And I buy that thesis . . . Whether or not they will in fact want to talk to people on different platforms, I can’t tell the future, so I don’t know” Systrom said.

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Josh Constine, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom speak onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger recommended Facebook try to prove users want that cross-app messaging before embarking on a giant engineering challenge of merging their backends. When I asked if Systrom ever had a burning desire to Instagram Direct message a WhatsApp user, he admitted “Personally, no.” But in a show of respect and solid media training, he told his former employer “Bravo for making a big bet and going for it.”

Then it was time for the hardest hitting question: their thoughts on Presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to regulate big tech and roll back Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram. “Do we get our job back?” Systrom joked, trying to diffuse the tension. Krieger urged more consideration of downstream externalities, and specificity on what problem a break up fixes. He wants differentiation between regulating Facebook’s acquisitions, Amazon white-labeling and selling products, and Apple’s right to run the only iOS App Store.

Acquisition vs Competition

“We live in a time where I think the anger against big tech has increased ten-fold — whether that’s because the property prices in your neighborhood have gone up, whether it’s because you don’t like Russian meddling in elections — there are a long list of reasons people are angry at tech right now and some of them I think are well-founded” Systrom confirmed. “That doesn’t mean that the answer is to break all the companies up. Breaking companies up is a very specific prescription for a very specific problem. If you want to fix economic issues there are ways of doing that. If you want to fix Russian meddling there are ways of doing that. Breaking up a company doesn’t fix those problems. That doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t be broken up if they get too big and they’re monopolies and they cause problems, but being big in and of itself is not a crime.”

attends Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas

Systrom then took a jab at Warren’s tech literacy, saying “part of what’s surprised me is that generally the policy is all tech should be broken up, and that feels to me again not nuanced enough and it shows me that the understanding of the problem isn’t there. I think it’s going to take a more nuanced proposal, but my fear is that something like a proposal to break up all tech is playing on everyone’s current feeling of anti-tech rather than doing what I think politicians should do which is address real problems and give real solutions.”

The two founders then gave some pretty spurious logic for why Instagram’s acquisition helped consumers. “As someone who ran the company for how many years inside of Facebook? Six? There was a lot of competition internally even and I think better ideas came out because of it. We grew both companies not just one company. It’s really hard question. What consumer was damaged because it grew to the size that it did? I think that’s a strong argument that in fact the acquisition worked out for consumers.” That ignores the fact that if Instagram and Facebook were rivals, they’d have to compete on privacy and treating their users well. Even if they inspired each other to build more engaging products, that doesn’t address where harm to consumers has been done.

Krieger suggested that the acquisition actually spurred competition by making Instagram a role modeI. “There was a gold rush of companies being like ‘I’m going to be the Instagram of X . . . the Instagram of Audio, the Instagram of video, the Instagram of dog photos.’ You saw people start new companies and try to build them out in order to try to achieve what we’ve gotten to.” Yet no startup besides Snapchat, which had already launched, has actually grown to rival Instagram. And seeing Instagram hold its own against the Facebook empire would have likely inspired many more startups — some of which can’t find funding since investors doubt their odds against a combined Facebook and Instagram

As for what’s next for the college buddies, “we’re giving ourselves the time to get curious about things again” Krieger says. They’re still exploring so there was no big reveal about their follow-up venture. But Systrom says they built Instagram by finding the mega-trend of cameras on phones and asking what they’d want to use, “and the question is, what’s the next wave?”

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2J5u0dO Original Content From: https://techcrunch.com

[toomanysinks]

Instagram founders say losing autonomy at Facebook meant “winning”

Rather than be sore about losing independence within Facebook, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told me it was an inevitable sign of his app’s triumph. Today at South By South West, Systrom and fellow co-founder Mike Krieger sat down for their first on-stage talk together since leaving Facebook in September. They discussed their super hero origin stories, authenticity on social media, looming regulation for big tech, and how they’re exploring what they’ll do next.

Krieger grew up hitting “view source” on websites while Systrom hacked on AOL booter programs that would kick people off instant messenger, teaching both how code could impact real people. As Instagram grew popular, Krieger described the “incredi-bad” feeling of fighting server fires and trying to keep the widely loved app online even if that meant programming in the middle of a sushi restaurant or camping retreat. He once even revived Instagram while drunk in the middle of the night, and woke up with no memory of the feat, confused about who’d fixed the problem. The former Instagram CTO implored founders not to fall into the “recruiting death spiral” where you’re too busy to recruit which makes you busier which makes you too busy to recruit…

But thankfully, the founders were also willing to dig into some tougher topics than their scrappy startup days.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (from left) drive to Palo Alto to raise their Series A, circa January 2011

Independence vs Importance.

“In some ways, there being less autonomy is a function of Instagram winning. If Instagram had just been this niche photo app for photographers, we probably would be working on that app for 20 year. Instead what happened was it got better and better and better, and it improved, and it got to a size where it was meaningfully important to this company” Systrom explained. “If this thing gets to that scale that we want it to get to which is why we’re doing this deal, the autonomy will eventually not be there as much because it’s so important. So in some ways it’s just an unavoidable thing if you’re successful. So you can choose, do you want to be unsuccessful and small and have all the autonomy in the world, or no?”

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Mike Krieger speaks onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger followed up that “I think if you study . . . all the current companies, the ones that succeed internally eventually have become so important to the acquiring company that it’s almost irresponsible to not be thinking about what are the right models for integration. The advice I generally give is, ‘are you okay with that if you succeed?’ And if you’re not then you shouldn’t do the deal.” If the loss of autonomy can’t be avoided, they suggest selling to a rocket ship that will invest in and care for your baby rather than shift priorities.

Asked if seeing his net worth ever feels surreal, Systrom said  money doesn’t make you happy and “I don’t really wake up in the morning and look at my bank account.” I noted that’s the convenient privilege of having a big one.

The pair threw cold water on the idea that being forced to earn more money drove them out of the company. “I remember having this series of conversations with Mark and other folks at Facebook and they’re like ‘You guys just joined, do not worry about monetization, we’ll figure this out down the road.’ And it actually came a lot more from us saying “1. It’s important for us to be contributing to the overall Fb Inc . . . and 2. Each person who joins before you have ads is a person you’re going to have to introduce ads to.” Systrom added that “to be clear, we were the ones pushing monetization, not the other way around, because we believed Instagram has to make money somehow. It costs a lot to run . . . We pushed hard on it so that we would be a successful unit within Facebook and I think we got to that point, which is really good.”

But from 2015 to 2016, Instagram’s remaining independence fueled a reinvention of its app with non-square photos, the shift to the algorithm, and the launch of Stories. On having to challenge the fundamental assumptions of a business, “You’ve got maybe a couple years of relevance when you build a product. If you don’t reinvent it every quarter or every year, then you fall out of relevance and you go away.”

That last launch was inspired by wanting to offer prismatic identity where people could share non-highlights that wouldn’t haunt them. But also, Systrom admits that “Honestly a big reason why was that for a long time, people’s profiles were filled with Snapchat links and it was clear that people were trying to bridge the two products. So by bringing the two products [Feed and Stories] into one place, we gave consumers what they wanted.” Though when I asked anyone in the crowd who was still mad about the algorithm to hiss, SXSW turned into a snake pit.

Regulating Big Tech

With Systrom and Krieger gone, Facebook is moving forward with plans to more tightly integrate Instagram with Facebook and WhatsApp. That includes unifying their messaging system, which some say is designed to make Facebook’s apps harder to break up with anti-trust regulation. What does Systrom think of the integration? “The more people that are available to talk with, the more useful the platform becomes. And I buy that thesis . . . Whether or not they will in fact want to talk to people on different platforms, I can’t tell the future, so I don’t know” Systrom said.

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Josh Constine, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom speak onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger recommended Facebook try to prove users want that cross-app messaging before embarking on a giant engineering challenge of merging their backends. When I asked if Systrom ever had a burning desire to Instagram Direct message a WhatsApp user, he admitted “Personally, no.” But in a show of respect and solid media training, he told his former employer “Bravo for making a big bet and going for it.”

Then it was time for the hardest hitting question: their thoughts on Presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to regulate big tech and roll back Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram. “Do we get our job back?” Systrom joked, trying to diffuse the tension. Krieger urged more consideration of downstream externalities, and specificity on what problem a break up fixes. He wants differentiation between regulating Facebook’s acquisitions, Amazon white-labeling and selling products, and Apple’s right to run the only iOS App Store.

Acquisition vs Competition

“We live in a time where I think the anger against big tech has increased ten-fold — whether that’s because the property prices in your neighborhood have gone up, whether it’s because you don’t like Russian meddling in elections — there are a long list of reasons people are angry at tech right now and some of them I think are well-founded” Systrom confirmed. “That doesn’t mean that the answer is to break all the companies up. Breaking companies up is a very specific prescription for a very specific problem. If you want to fix economic issues there are ways of doing that. If you want to fix Russian meddling there are ways of doing that. Breaking up a company doesn’t fix those problems. That doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t be broken up if they get too big and they’re monopolies and they cause problems, but being big in and of itself is not a crime.”

attends Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas

Systrom then took a jab at Warren’s tech literacy, saying “part of what’s surprised me is that generally the policy is all tech should be broken up, and that feels to me again not nuanced enough and it shows me that the understanding of the problem isn’t there. I think it’s going to take a more nuanced proposal, but my fear is that something like a proposal to break up all tech is playing on everyone’s current feeling of anti-tech rather than doing what I think politicians should do which is address real problems and give real solutions.”

The two founders then gave some pretty spurious logic for why Instagram’s acquisition helped consumers. “As someone who ran the company for how many years inside of Facebook? Six? There was a lot of competition internally even and I think better ideas came out because of it. We grew both companies not just one company. It’s really hard question. What consumer was damaged because it grew to the size that it did? I think that’s a strong argument that in fact the acquisition worked out for consumers.” That ignores the fact that if Instagram and Facebook were rivals, they’d have to compete on privacy and treating their users well. Even if they inspired each other to build more engaging products, that doesn’t address where harm to consumers has been done.

Krieger suggested that the acquisition actually spurred competition by making Instagram a role modeI. “There was a gold rush of companies being like ‘I’m going to be the Instagram of X . . . the Instagram of Audio, the Instagram of video, the Instagram of dog photos.’ You saw people start new companies and try to build them out in order to try to achieve what we’ve gotten to.” Yet no startup besides Snapchat, which had already launched, has actually grown to rival Instagram. And seeing Instagram hold its own against the Facebook empire would have likely inspired many more startups — some of which can’t find funding since investors doubt their odds against a combined Facebook and Instagram

As for what’s next for the college buddies, “we’re giving ourselves the time to get curious about things again” Krieger says. They’re still exploring so there was no big reveal about their follow-up venture. But Systrom says they built Instagram by finding the mega-trend of cameras on phones and asking what they’d want to use, “and the question is, what’s the next wave?”

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/11/instagram-founders-sxsw/

[fmservers]

Instagram founders say losing autonomy at Facebook meant “winning”

Rather than be sore about losing independence within Facebook, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told me it was an inevitable sign of his app’s triumph. Today at South By South West, Systrom and fellow co-founder Mike Krieger sat down for their first on-stage talk together since leaving Facebook in September. They discussed their super hero origin stories, authenticity on social media, looming regulation for big tech, and how they’re exploring what they’ll do next.

Krieger grew up hitting “view source” on websites while Systrom hacked on AOL booter programs that would kick people off instant messenger, teaching both how code could impact real people. As Instagram grew popular, Krieger described the “incredi-bad” feeling of fighting server fires and trying to keep the widely loved app online even if that meant programming in the middle of a sushi restaurant or camping retreat. He once even revived Instagram while drunk in the middle of the night, and woke up with no memory of the feat, confused about who’d fixed the problem. The former Instagram CTO implored founders not to fall into the “recruiting death spiral” where you’re too busy to recruit which makes you busier which makes you too busy to recruit…

But thankfully, the founders were also willing to dig into some tougher topics than their scrappy startup days.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (from left) drive to Palo Alto to raise their Series A, circa January 2011

Independence vs Importance.

“In some ways, there being less autonomy is a function of Instagram winning. If Instagram had just been this niche photo app for photographers, we probably would be working on that app for 20 year. Instead what happened was it got better and better and better, and it improved, and it got to a size where it was meaningfully important to this company” Systrom explained. “If this thing gets to that scale that we want it to get to which is why we’re doing this deal, the autonomy will eventually not be there as much because it’s so important. So in some ways it’s just an unavoidable thing if you’re successful. So you can choose, do you want to be unsuccessful and small and have all the autonomy in the world, or no?”

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Mike Krieger speaks onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger followed up that “I think if you study . . . all the current companies, the ones that succeed internally eventually have become so important to the acquiring company that it’s almost irresponsible to not be thinking about what are the right models for integration. The advice I generally give is, ‘are you okay with that if you succeed?’ And if you’re not then you shouldn’t do the deal.” If the loss of autonomy can’t be avoided, they suggest selling to a rocket ship that will invest in and care for your baby rather than shift priorities.

Asked if seeing his net worth ever feels surreal, Systrom said  money doesn’t make you happy and “I don’t really wake up in the morning and look at my bank account.” I noted that’s the convenient privilege of having a big one.

The pair threw cold water on the idea that being forced to earn more money drove them out of the company. “I remember having this series of conversations with Mark and other folks at Facebook and they’re like ‘You guys just joined, do not worry about monetization, we’ll figure this out down the road.’ And it actually came a lot more from us saying “1. It’s important for us to be contributing to the overall Fb Inc . . . and 2. Each person who joins before you have ads is a person you’re going to have to introduce ads to.” Systrom added that “to be clear, we were the ones pushing monetization, not the other way around, because we believed Instagram has to make money somehow. It costs a lot to run . . . We pushed hard on it so that we would be a successful unit within Facebook and I think we got to that point, which is really good.”

But from 2015 to 2016, Instagram’s remaining independence fueled a reinvention of its app with non-square photos, the shift to the algorithm, and the launch of Stories. On having to challenge the fundamental assumptions of a business, “You’ve got maybe a couple years of relevance when you build a product. If you don’t reinvent it every quarter or every year, then you fall out of relevance and you go away.”

That last launch was inspired by wanting to offer prismatic identity where people could share non-highlights that wouldn’t haunt them. But also, Systrom admits that “Honestly a big reason why was that for a long time, people’s profiles were filled with Snapchat links and it was clear that people were trying to bridge the two products. So by bringing the two products [Feed and Stories] into one place, we gave consumers what they wanted.” Though when I asked anyone in the crowd who was still mad about the algorithm to hiss, SXSW turned into a snake pit.

Regulating Big Tech

With Systrom and Krieger gone, Facebook is moving forward with plans to more tightly integrate Instagram with Facebook and WhatsApp. That includes unifying their messaging system, which some say is designed to make Facebook’s apps harder to break up with anti-trust regulation. What does Systrom think of the integration? “The more people that are available to talk with, the more useful the platform becomes. And I buy that thesis . . . Whether or not they will in fact want to talk to people on different platforms, I can’t tell the future, so I don’t know” Systrom said.

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Josh Constine, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom speak onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger recommended Facebook try to prove users want that cross-app messaging before embarking on a giant engineering challenge of merging their backends. When I asked if Systrom ever had a burning desire to Instagram Direct message a WhatsApp user, he admitted “Personally, no.” But in a show of respect and solid media training, he told his former employer “Bravo for making a big bet and going for it.”

Then it was time for the hardest hitting question: their thoughts on Presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to regulate big tech and roll back Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram. “Do we get our job back?” Systrom joked, trying to diffuse the tension. Krieger urged more consideration of downstream externalities, and specificity on what problem a break up fixes. He wants differentiation between regulating Facebook’s acquisitions, Amazon white-labeling and selling products, and Apple’s right to run the only iOS App Store.

Acquisition vs Competition

“We live in a time where I think the anger against big tech has increased ten-fold — whether that’s because the property prices in your neighborhood have gone up, whether it’s because you don’t like Russian meddling in elections — there are a long list of reasons people are angry at tech right now and some of them I think are well-founded” Systrom confirmed. “That doesn’t mean that the answer is to break all the companies up. Breaking companies up is a very specific prescription for a very specific problem. If you want to fix economic issues there are ways of doing that. If you want to fix Russian meddling there are ways of doing that. Breaking up a company doesn’t fix those problems. That doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t be broken up if they get too big and they’re monopolies and they cause problems, but being big in and of itself is not a crime.”

attends Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas

Systrom then took a jab at Warren’s tech literacy, saying “part of what’s surprised me is that generally the policy is all tech should be broken up, and that feels to me again not nuanced enough and it shows me that the understanding of the problem isn’t there. I think it’s going to take a more nuanced proposal, but my fear is that something like a proposal to break up all tech is playing on everyone’s current feeling of anti-tech rather than doing what I think politicians should do which is address real problems and give real solutions.”

The two founders then gave some pretty spurious logic for why Instagram’s acquisition helped consumers. “As someone who ran the company for how many years inside of Facebook? Six? There was a lot of competition internally even and I think better ideas came out because of it. We grew both companies not just one company. It’s really hard question. What consumer was damaged because it grew to the size that it did? I think that’s a strong argument that in fact the acquisition worked out for consumers.” That ignores the fact that if Instagram and Facebook were rivals, they’d have to compete on privacy and treating their users well. Even if they inspired each other to build more engaging products, that doesn’t address where harm to consumers has been done.

Krieger suggested that the acquisition actually spurred competition by making Instagram a role modeI. “There was a gold rush of companies being like ‘I’m going to be the Instagram of X . . . the Instagram of Audio, the Instagram of video, the Instagram of dog photos.’ You saw people start new companies and try to build them out in order to try to achieve what we’ve gotten to.” Yet no startup besides Snapchat, which had already launched, has actually grown to rival Instagram. And seeing Instagram hold its own against the Facebook empire would have likely inspired many more startups — some of which can’t find funding since investors doubt their odds against a combined Facebook and Instagram

As for what’s next for the college buddies, “we’re giving ourselves the time to get curious about things again” Krieger says. They’re still exploring so there was no big reveal about their follow-up venture. But Systrom says they built Instagram by finding the mega-trend of cameras on phones and asking what they’d want to use, “and the question is, what’s the next wave?”

Via Josh Constine https://techcrunch.com

[readersforum]

Instagram founders say losing autonomy at Facebook meant “winning”

New Post has been published on https://www.readersforum.tk/instagram-founders-say-losing-autonomy-at-facebook-meant-winning/

Instagram founders say losing autonomy at Facebook meant “winning”

Rather than be sore about losing independence within Facebook, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom told me it was an inevitable sign of his app’s triumph. Today at South By South West, Systrom and fellow co-founder Mike Krieger sat down for their first on-stage talk together since leaving Facebook in September. They discussed their super hero origin stories, authenticity on social media, looming regulation for big tech, and how they’re exploring what they’ll do next.

Krieger grew up hitting “view source” on websites while Systrom hacked on AOL booter programs that would kick people off instant messenger, teaching both how code could impact real people. As Instagram grew popular, Krieger described the “incredi-bad” feeling of fighting server fires and trying to keep the widely loved app online even if that meant programming in the middle of a sushi restaurant or camping retreat. He once even revived Instagram while drunk in the middle of the night, and woke up with no memory of the feat, confused about who’d fixed the problem. The former Instagram CTO implored founders not to fall into the “recruiting death spiral” where you’re too busy to recruit which makes you busier which makes you too busy to recruit…

But thankfully, the founders were also willing to dig into some tougher topics than their scrappy startup days.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (from left) drive to Palo Alto to raise their Series A, circa January 2011

Independence vs Importance.

“In some ways, there being less autonomy is a function of Instagram winning. If Instagram had just been this niche photo app for photographers, we probably would be working on that app for 20 year. Instead what happened was it got better and better and better, and it improved, and it got to a size where it was meaningfully important to this company” Systrom explained. “If this thing gets to that scale that we want it to get to which is why we’re doing this deal, the autonomy will eventually not be there as much because it’s so important. So in some ways it’s just an unavoidable thing if you’re successful. So you can choose, do you want to be unsuccessful and small and have all the autonomy in the world, or no?”

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Mike Krieger speaks onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger followed up that “I think if you study . . . all the current companies, the ones that succeed internally eventually have become so important to the acquiring company that it’s almost irresponsible to not be thinking about what are the right models for integration. The advice I generally give is, ‘are you okay with that if you succeed?’ And if you’re not then you shouldn’t do the deal.” If the loss of autonomy can’t be avoided, they suggest selling to a rocket ship that will invest in and care for your baby rather than shift priorities.

Asked if seeing his net worth ever feels surreal, Systrom said  money doesn’t make you happy and “I don’t really wake up in the morning and look at my bank account.” I noted that’s the convenient privilege of having a big one.

The pair threw cold water on the idea that being forced to earn more money drove them out of the company. “I remember having this series of conversations with Mark and other folks at Facebook and they’re like ‘You guys just joined, do not worry about monetization, we’ll figure this out down the road.’ And it actually came a lot more from us saying “1. It’s important for us to be contributing to the overall Fb Inc . . . and 2. Each person who joins before you have ads is a person you’re going to have to introduce ads to.” Systrom added that “to be clear, we were the ones pushing monetization, not the other way around, because we believed Instagram has to make money somehow. It costs a lot to run . . . We pushed hard on it so that we would be a successful unit within Facebook and I think we got to that point, which is really good.”

But from 2015 to 2016, Instagram’s remaining independence fueled a reinvention of its app with non-square photos, the shift to the algorithm, and the launch of Stories. On having to challenge the fundamental assumptions of a business, “You’ve got maybe a couple years of relevance when you build a product. If you don’t reinvent it every quarter or every year, then you fall out of relevance and you go away.”

That last launch was inspired by wanting to offer prismatic identity where people could share non-highlights that wouldn’t haunt them. But also, Systrom admits that “Honestly a big reason why was that for a long time, people’s profiles were filled with Snapchat links and it was clear that people were trying to bridge the two products. So by bringing the two products [Feed and Stories] into one place, we gave consumers what they wanted.” Though when I asked anyone in the crowd who was still mad about the algorithm to hiss, SXSW turned into a snake pit.

Regulating Big Tech

With Systrom and Krieger gone, Facebook is moving forward with plans to more tightly integrate Instagram with Facebook and WhatsApp. That includes unifying their messaging system, which some say is designed to make Facebook’s apps harder to break up with anti-trust regulation. What does Systrom think of the integration? “The more people that are available to talk with, the more useful the platform becomes. And I buy that thesis . . . Whether or not they will in fact want to talk to people on different platforms, I can’t tell the future, so I don’t know” Systrom said.

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 11: Josh Constine, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom speak onstage at Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Chris Saucedo/Getty Images for SXSW)

Krieger recommended Facebook try to prove users want that cross-app messaging before embarking on a giant engineering challenge of merging their backends. When I asked if Systrom ever had a burning desire to Instagram Direct message a WhatsApp user, he admitted “Personally, no.” But in a show of respect and solid media training, he told his former employer “Bravo for making a big bet and going for it.”

Then it was time for the hardest hitting question: their thoughts on Presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to regulate big tech and roll back Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram. “Do we get our job back?” Systrom joked, trying to diffuse the tension. Krieger urged more consideration of downstream externalities, and specificity on what problem a break up fixes. He wants differentiation between regulating Facebook’s acquisitions, Amazon white-labeling and selling products, and Apple’s right to run the only iOS App Store.

Acquisition vs Competition

“We live in a time where I think the anger against big tech has increased ten-fold — whether that’s because the property prices in your neighborhood have gone up, whether it’s because you don’t like Russian meddling in elections — there are a long list of reasons people are angry at tech right now and some of them I think are well-founded” Systrom confirmed. “That doesn’t mean that the answer is to break all the companies up. Breaking companies up is a very specific prescription for a very specific problem. If you want to fix economic issues there are ways of doing that. If you want to fix Russian meddling there are ways of doing that. Breaking up a company doesn’t fix those problems. That doesn’t mean that companies shouldn’t be broken up if they get too big and they’re monopolies and they cause problems, but being big in and of itself is not a crime.”

attends Interactive Keynote: Instagram Founders Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger with Josh Constine during the 2019 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center on March 11, 2019 in Austin, Texas

Systrom then took a jab at Warren’s tech literacy, saying “part of what’s surprised me is that generally the policy is all tech should be broken up, and that feels to me again not nuanced enough and it shows me that the understanding of the problem isn’t there. I think it’s going to take a more nuanced proposal, but my fear is that something like a proposal to break up all tech is playing on everyone’s current feeling of anti-tech rather than doing what I think politicians should do which is address real problems and give real solutions.”

The two founders then gave some pretty spurious logic for why Instagram’s acquisition helped consumers. “As someone who ran the company for how many years inside of Facebook? Six? There was a lot of competition internally even and I think better ideas came out because of it. We grew both companies not just one company. It’s really hard question. What consumer was damaged because it grew to the size that it did? I think that’s a strong argument that in fact the acquisition worked out for consumers.” That ignores the fact that if Instagram and Facebook were rivals, they’d have to compete on privacy and treating their users well. Even if they inspired each other to build more engaging products, that doesn’t address where harm to consumers has been done.

Krieger suggested that the acquisition actually spurred competition by making Instagram a role modeI. “There was a gold rush of companies being like ‘I’m going to be the Instagram of X . . . the Instagram of Audio, the Instagram of video, the Instagram of dog photos.’ You saw people start new companies and try to build them out in order to try to achieve what we’ve gotten to.” Yet no startup besides Snapchat, which had already launched, has actually grown to rival Instagram. And seeing Instagram hold its own against the Facebook empire would have likely inspired many more startups — some of which can’t find funding since investors doubt their odds against a combined Facebook and Instagram

As for what’s next for the college buddies, “we’re giving ourselves the time to get curious about things again” Krieger says. They’re still exploring so there was no big reveal about their follow-up venture. But Systrom says they built Instagram by finding the mega-trend of cameras on phones and asking what they’d want to use, “and the question is, what’s the next wave?”